The Other Other Locked Room
by JMK758
Summary: When a body is found walled up in her home, it reopens a Cold Case even while Tim works on his 4th novel featuring the Continued Adventures of L.J. Tibbs. Rated M for Sexual Situations.
1. Aspects of Love

This is my 36th NCIS Mystery, the Sixth story of my Fourth Season.  
'NCIS' and 'NCIS New Orleans' are owned by Belisarius Productions. The usual legal Disclaimers apply. I only own Rev. Siobhan (O'Mallory) McGee, Apprentice Pathologist Dr. Samantha Sky and original Agents. You can find all my stories listed in order in my Profile.  
This story begins on Thursday, July 26, a day after the end of 'On the High Seas'.  
We all know how Tim likes to base his novels on real life situations and characters, so this time you can read his work 'The Other Locked Room', the continuing adventures of Special Agents L.J. Tibbs, Tommy, Lisa, McGregor, Shelly and Pimmy Jalmer together with Drs. Richard Dodgers and Sabrina Shore and Forensic Scientist Amy Sutton as my episode 'Accused'.  
Rated M for Violence and Adult Situations  
Please Review.

The Other Other Locked Room  
by JMK758  
Chapter One  
Aspects of Love

Michelle Palmer pulls the rolling suitcase by its telescoping handle off the elevator ahead of her similarly burdened husband, but the moment he's off onto the third floor landing Jimmy pulls the handle from her hand.

"I'll take care of it," he offers, tugs both cases the twenty feet to their door, one of four in this level. They'd gotten an early afternoon flight out of Los Angeles, hadn't been in any particular hurry to end their vacations, so it's evening by the time they return to Orchard Lane off 30th, Georgetown.

Gibbs, Abby, Ziva, Tony and Jeanne had flown back last evening when the ship had docked but she'd wanted to stay through the weekend in LA and enjoy their Suspensions. But after an evening and night of being driven crazy, she'd decided she could be driven crazy more comfortably at home, so they'd joined the McGees on the flight back. Siobhan has to report in to the Parish this evening and Tim spent most of the flight splitting his attention between their conversations and working on 'The Other Locked Room' on his writing computer.

"Of course you will," she breathes below a whisper, follows him and reaches into her shorts pocket for her keys.

"I've got it," he says quickly, settling the two cases so he stands in front of the corner door, pulls his own ring out and unlocks the door, opens it and pulls both cases in. She can do nothing but follow the tall man inside.

He leaves the cases on either side of the door, knows better than to roll them along the carpet into the bedroom. He quickly crosses the room and starts the air conditioner. Washington is 90 degrees; they'd avoided the worst heat of the day with their late arrival but the apartment easily flirts with 100, so shorts and tee shirts are more than plenty. He turns on the unit and though she can't see what he resets the temperature to she hears too many beeps.

Michelle pushes the two handles down and starts to lift the cases but he's right in front of her.

"I've got them, darling." Inserting his hands over her palms, he takes the handles and boosts both pieces of luggage up. "You relax." He turns and carries the set past the couch, right and into the short corridor past bath and closet into the bedroom.

"Of course, dearest," she whispers and follows him.

x

The light blue and white trimmed bedroom's most prominent feature is the Queen size bed extending from the right wall between the two windows, more than they need and frequently not large enough. On her left are their matched dressers, on hers is their small television with cable and VCR boxes on his.

In the far left corner is her mobile Altar, looking quite unlike anything but a small squared CD and Video cabinet until she would roll it out and align it East, open the front to remove from a box her implements and spread upon the top the purple cloth with its large silver circled star that reaches to the ends of the case. The far side of the room contains their closets while immediately to her right near the foot of the bed is her seven foot tall Scrying mirror within a heavily carved mahogany frame which bears arcane symbols he's never asked about and is topped with a Wiccan star.

He's already set the cases by the dressers at the left wall before the television dresser and flashes to the conditioner at the far right corner of the room at the head of her side of the Queen bed. He turns the unit on high, sets it for forty degrees to rapidly cut the temperature in the hot room.

She starts to go to the suitcases but he's already back and intercepts her. She feels like she's watching the Flash in a single player tennis game.

His hands lightly grasp her shoulders and gently guide her backward. "I'll take care of unpacking."

"Well, would you please slow down?" she pleads as he backs her up. "You're making me hot just watching you."

Her knees press the foot of the bed and he eases her down onto the large mattress. "You just sit down and relax. It's much too hot."

"Too hot." She looks over her left shoulder to the hard blowing device in the window. "In fifteen minutes you could bring all the food in here and turn off the fridge."

"I just want you to sit down and be comfortable."

She clamps her teeth to hold back the sigh. "Sweetheart, I sat in the hotel room while you fussed, I sat in the cab, I sat for five hours on the plane except when you let me up to pee, then I sat in the cab out of Reagan. If there's one thing I do not need to do, it's to sit down." She tries to stand up but is intercepted by his restraining hands.

x

"I'm concerned about you," he swears when he has her down again.

"I know you are, sweetheart." She looks up the tower of husbandly solicitousness and, while his attention is wonderful, she wishes he had an 'off' switch.

"In your condition you need plenty of rest." He kneels on one knee and starts unlacing her sneakers, removes each and pushes them under the foot of the bed. "Doesn't that feel better?" he asks as he starts massaging her right foot.

She takes a deep breath of rapidly cooling air, lets it out very slowly rather than in a sigh, looks at him and strives for more patience than she's had in months. "It does," she admits, but she pushes down until he must release her foot, good as this ministrations had felt, and she presses both feet onto the carpet. "Jimmy, I know you love me, but darling, you are really freaking me out."

"Honey–"

She grips his arms, forcing his attention. "I conceived this baby _five - days - ago_. You're a Doctor, two of our best friends are Doctors and I have a wonderful Gynecologist who doesn't even need to see me yet. My appointment is next Wednesday; you know that because you insisted on my making it from the Hotel. Barbara Copeland took me through everything I need to know when we were aboard the Pacific Princess, so much so that I practically have a Midwife's Degree. I can work through my second Trimester before NCIS mandatorally modifies my duty in January and I even disagree with that. I do not - need - coddling."

"What do you need?" He stands up. "I'll get it, honey."

She shakes her head, this time does sigh out her frustration. He hadn't heard a word. "I need you to stop treating me like I'm a fourteenth Century China Doll."

"I love you."

That takes out so much of the frustration. She's seen constant and continuous displays of his love throughout the past week. "And I love you too, sweetheart."

"I don't want you to strain yourself in your delicate–"

" _Jimmy_." She fights it back. It's not really his fault that he's acting like a young husband who's just learned his wife is pregnant. Actually, she decides, he's not acting like that, he's acting like Jimmy Palmer, but nine months of this... "I know you love me, darling. Do you believe I love you?"

"Of course."

"Good."

x

Hands on his hips, she shoves hard and he staggers backward nearly to the television. She jumps up and lands before him. Grabbing a double fistful of his tee shirt she falls backward, pulls him and gets her right foot onto his pelvis. She lands on her back, shoves upward hard, keeps hold of his shirt and as he sails over her with a yell she lets go at the last instant so he lands on his back upon the mattress, head clearing the end.

She uses the reverse momentum to roll back up to her feet and hurries around to her side of the bed, jumps up so she comes down straddling his hips, yanks at his tee shirt to pull it out of his shorts.

"' _CHELLE_?"

She shoves the material up past his head, his arms raised high as the neckline almost dislodges his glasses but she's careful. She traps his upraised arms in the shirt and twists it tight, uses her left hand on the rolled shirt to pin his arms off the bed, her right hand holds his chin in place. "I'll show you how delicate I am!"

She lets go of his chin to cup and support the back of his head, lays on his bare chest and uses her lips to silence him.

xxx

Debbie pulls the full apron that protected her brown dress off, carries the two plates of roast beef with plenty of fixings from the kitchen and places them on the dining room table a well timed second before the front door opens and Jerry enters. He always wants dinner ready when he arrives, rarely taking the time to change from work but, as a creature of habit, he's very easy to predict. Taking up the matchbook, she lights the single taper in the middle of the table, trying to set a romantic mood. She turns and puts her delight not only into her eyes and smile but her whole being. "Welcome home, darling."

He has set his briefcase on the floor, smooths back his black hair and pulls his shirt loose.

"Take off your clothes."

"Now darling," she says, crossing the room to him, "that can wait. I made your favorite, roast bee–" Debbie never sees the slap that explodes into her left cheek, the crack loud as a gunshot and she staggers to her right.

"I _told_ you to take off your clothes, _bitch_."

"Dar–" The second slap is harder than the first, followed immediately by a backhand crack that makes her stagger to her left. She holds her cheeks, looks up at him and he raises his hand again. "Wait!" she pleads. "I'll do it."

Fingers trembling, she releases her stinging, heated cheeks and reaches for the first button. Shaking, knowing she has no hope of changing his mind, she opens one button after the other, down to the last at her stomach. Under her dress her breasts are swollen and dark with uncounted bruises. The swelling had prevented their confinement in a bra, but that would have been no protection.

She pulls the dress down her arms, pulls the sleeves free and is about to push the material over her hips when he clutches her breasts, swollen too large for his wide hands to cover completely. Any touch hurts and he squeezes, viciously crushes her.

She covers her own mouth with her left hand lest the neighbors hear and shrieks into her palm.

xxx

Nine pm in Bloomingdale, the Gala Opening of the Restored 18th Century McGregor mansion in the northwestern quarter of DC. The huge house is a monument to a bygone era where a millionaire was today's billionaire and those very few who had such staggering wealth knew how to show it. From the long, tree lined drive that loops around a shade tree that must be a thousand years old to be seen from so many miles away to the double doors, double wide and double high to the gables and peaks that adorn the roof, the elegance of this three story mansion bespeaks a bygone era distant as a dream.

Inside there is nothing, from the Staffordshire Pottery to the Dutch Delft Earthenware, from the Hepplewhite Mahogany Wing Chair in the foyer to the Neoclassical Wall Mirror in the Drawing Room on the left, from the Tiffany Lamps on many of the ornate tables throughout the house to the Antique Church Stained Glass Windows that in daylight color the foyer from either side of the door, that does not predate the most elderly guest.

The French doors which front every room on the first floor are sycamore, aspen and poplar and the natural white of the wood testifies to generations of care. The marble staircase extends from the end of the too large foyer to branch in two directions to the corners of the second floor and the gold inlaid banisters virtually sparkle. The gold touched marble statue of Cupid set in the foyer's center, its ivory arrow drawn toward the right corner door to bring down some unsuspecting victim who might step out of the hallway leading to the east wing with amore, costs more than the year's salary of a Civil Servant and, impressive as it is, Abby Sciuto truly wants to be home in her coffin.

x

All right, she'll never say so to her friend but wandering the museum-like halls of a millionaire's home while wearing the black gown she'd worn on that first night's dinner aboard the Pacific Princess, the one with the low cut décolletage and backless to show her large ornate cross to best advantage, while she holds a crystal glass of champagne by a white silk napkin, ranks quite a distance below sitting at a 'Brain Matter' Concert in the 'pulverize and deafen' row.

She still feels jet lagged from yesterday's flight back from LA and she suspects her stomach is still somewhere over northern Kansas. As she wanders back from the too elegant drawing room to the left of the main door into the too large foyer (is her subconscious moving her to the front door?) she tries to answer for herself why she'd said 'yes'. Wandering among more tuxedoed and gowned strangers than she ever wants to see again, as though the Pacific Princess had not been enough, she considers once again that through the admittedly impressive tribute to 18th Century very conspicuous elegance is lovely, she should have said 'no'.

But Bill Marsters, half owner of one of DC's most elegant Art Galleries, had scored an invitation from a wealthy benefactor who couldn't attend and who thought Bill's girlfriend would be impressed by the lavish opulence. Okay, it is and she is, but he'd invited Sammy, and this is very much their speed. Sammy, who hadn't seen her in a week, had invited her and she made the mistake of not whacking the back of the imp's head.

In terms of speed, they're a Sunday drive in the days when people took Sunday drives - probably in the heyday of this place - while she's Indy 500 and it's late Thursday evening and there's a full moon in the sky.

Can you be in the Indy as a third wheel on someone else's date?

x

Sammy - Samantha Sky on paper and playbills - was introduced by Bill to the Butler as a Concert Violinist, quite true though Fifth Violinist doesn't translate in Society Circles to Prima Violinist so he'd left that little detail out.

Sammy, being quicker on the draw, had presented Dr. Abigail Sciuto as a Scientist of great renown who works closely with Drs. Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking, thereby sealing her fate. She hadn't liked it, feeling she can stand on her own but Sammy had insisted upon the misdirection, telling her that Forensic Scientist just doesn't have the same ommph that Cosmologist has.

She doubts that many here, with their minds filled with either Society or the acquisition of wealth, could tell anyone the difference between a Cosmologist and a Cosmonaut. But as her fame grew, it had resulted in some interesting conversations.

x

Anywho, Sammy had said she'd wanted her and Bill to get to know one another better, though why she needs to get to know her friend's boyfriend better she doesn't know. Sammy's happy (when is Sammy not ecstatic?) and that's all that matters. And if he ever does something to make Tinkerbell _un_ happy,she'll take action and there'll be no Forensic evidence.

Okay, Sammy said she wants to talk to her tonight. During her Date Night - the girl's racking up the head slaps - but she'll listen (when Sammy finally gets around to telling her) and then she'll take her third wheel and ride it home.

She sees them enter the large Foyer Room through that right rear door beside the bifurcate marble stairs, Sammy with her hands wrapped about his arm as they walk. His black tuxedo fits him so elegantly that her first thought had been 'yummy', but she'll never let her friend know this thought. She's probably blissfully unaware that Cupid is about to score a completely unnecessary bulls eye, for she's hugging Bill's arm to her like it's the Treasure of the Ancients.

'If I ever get that lovey dovey, somebody shoot me. Please.' True, it looks good on her, and the idea of arm candy in this sense is a good one, but she'll take a Goth Party in a full moonlit cemetery to–

No, strike that, that's how she met Mikel Mahwer.

x

The blue gown Sammy bought for this night - she pulls in Concert Violinist's and Apprentice ME's salaries so she can buy elegant gowns on the spur of the moment, though she can wear it at work - had been topped by a blue silk shawl now threaded through the straps of her purse. Abby had never seen her in such dress as this before and decides she's not missing much, for her friend isn't quite in this one.

Though eight inches separate them in height, Sammy is endowed enough to where they can share bras, so the difference makes a more pronounced statement. But a push up bra is one thing, shove up and offer a taste is, well, pushing it.

In fact, though Abby carries her badge, mostly because she'd learned her lesson by not having it when she'd needed it aboard the Pacific Princess, she wishes she had a set of handcuffs now for that girl truly needs to be arrested.

No, strike that too; she'd probably enjoy the cuffs way too much.

x

Abby watches as the couple pauses at the right wall in front of a fancy bit of wall decoration, grapes on the vine with various flowers, all rendered in full color on royal blue. Sammy reaches into her purse and pulls out a four by six pad and, Heaven help her, a plastic tube used for collecting long swab evidence, from which she takes and presents a #2 pencil.

Bill, ever the artist, starts to work on a sketch and Sammy, spotting her, steps away and crosses the room. They rendezvous at the hunting Cupid. "He'll be good for about twenty minutes," she predicts.

"So, what trouble have you been getting yourself into?"

Her lips say "I _beg_ your pardon," but her eyes say 'Plenty'. "People want to know the life of a Concert Violinist but I didn't tell them much. I'm not sure many of these people, nice as they are, can tell a Stradivarius from a Mackey Fiddle. I told them I apprenticed under Gus Mendelssohn," she finishes with a sly grin.

" _Gustav_ Mendelssohn?"

"Yeppers."

"Pathetic."

"I know! What about you?"

"Oh, these Richie Riches did recognize two of the Papers I presented. I'm sorry I never wrote them, they sounded good. I had a delightful set of conversations, one with a Dowager who asked me about some of the research I'm doing with Carl Sagan."

"Sagan? They _do_ realize I was kidding, don't they?"

"Nope."

"Good God. Which Papers did they recognize?"

"The first was 'Superluminary Emissions from Quantum Singularities'."

"Faster than light light from a black hole?" She rolls her eyes.

"That wasn't anywhere nearly as good as their reactions to the one I published with Stephen Hawking: 'Dyson Sphere Accumulation of Dark Energy to Energize a Hyper-Temporal Device within a Chronoton Vortex, allowing placement of a Four Dimensional Transportation Unit within a Three Dimensional Cross Section of the Spatial Temporal Continuum'. Several people recognized that."

Sammy had started giving her 'deer-in-the-headlights' eyes after 'Three Dimensional Cross Section'. "Huh?"

"A fan's explanation of how the TARDIS is powered."

"Well of course, everyone knows that."

"I did promise to say hello to Carl Sagan for her."

"Of course."

"When I dig up my Ouija board." She looks up to the ceiling. "Sorry, Carl."

x

She sees Bill Marsters is still busy capturing some of the wall decorations. "So. A _swab_ tube?"

"Gibbsie's Rule 36, I think it is. 'Always be prepared'."

"That's Boy Scouts Number 1. And 'Anticipate every possibility' is 29. 36 is 'If you think you're being played, you probably are'; and in that dress you're going to be played _with_ before the night's over."

" _Counting_ on it," the imp assures her.

"What's with the floor show?"

"I thought that for tonight I'd let the girls out to play."

"Well, they're playing a bit too much." But Sammy's answering grin only shows she has no intention of slowing down and Abby starts to feel like worse than that third wheel. Time to wrap things up before the party gets raided. "So what's the big news?"

Sammy gives her blank face. "I don't know. What is the big news?"

She will smack her yet. "You told me you wanted to talk about something - _during_ your date."

"Oh. Not news." She looks around. "But not here. Come on."

'If this is 'Powder Room' talk, she is going to be _so_ sorry.' But Abby lets herself be tugged away.

x

Samantha leads her back the way she and Bill had come through the right door and down a blue and white hall whose vaulted ceiling could give Michelangelo a fit of envy.

All the elegant halls on this floor are royal blue and bear bas relief decorative reverse arches of strings of pearls which join one marble Corinthian style half column to the next. Illuminated by three gold chandeliers, each wall segment contains a different large scene over the pearls, be it natural, historical or mythological. The floors are white marble and the vaunted ceilings contain equally elaborate art that Bill might have been sketching if he hadn't had his Tinkerbell on his arm.

It's time to rein the girl in. Midway along this long hall she plants her heels and gives Sammy a sharp and very literal yank to bring her about.

"Okay, so what's up?"

"I just–" The hallway beyond them explodes in chaos as a huge hoard of boys, possibly no one of them older than eight, charges around a forward left corner and nearly runs them down. Only by diving backward into the wall beside her, colliding hard enough to shake her eyeballs, does Abby avoid being crushed by the stampede. It's over quickly, the silent monsters here one moment and gone the next, the chaos moving off from the trembling hallway. She hears loud protests come from the Foyer and hopes someone brought a lasso.

"Kids should be on leashes," she gripes, wondering who would be so oblivious as to bring such a mob to a formal opening such as this and then leave them unattended to get into this mischief. "Right, Sammy?"

"Sammy?"

" _Sammy_?"

x

Samantha Sky tries to look about her but blackness presses upon her eyes. A moment ago she'd hit the blue wall with her back when she'd jumped away to avoid being crushed by a mob at a 99% off Mall Opening. She only knows she hit the wall - and kept on going.

It's quiet, not quite the utter silence of one of her friend's fabled tombs but quiet enough and black enough for that morbid mausoleum. Slowly her eyes adjust to the blackness and she finds it's not as total as it had seemed. There's a very thin glow... no, a faint rectangle of light, wafer thin and barely visible, rather like a double wide door frame.

She steps up to it, can feel a rough wall. She feels the line of light on her right, thinner than a sheet of paper. She can feel nothing, no knob, no handle, nothing to grab; she can't even get her fingernails into the crack.

Sound. Not quite perfect silence but unintelligible murmuring. She presses her ear to the section outlined by the light. The sound is still too soft but she can make out "I'm telling you we were right here. Then the Mongol Hoard descended on us and she was just gone."

"Could she have...? I don't know..."

"BILL? ABBY? I'm in HERE!"

"I don't know. She couldn't've gone anywhere; I looked. It's like a Twilight Zone episode, one second she's here, the next - _poof."_

'Oh, Abby.' She takes a half step back, draws a deep breath and screams the shrillest shriek she's ever managed.

"Did you hear that?"

'Bill, they heard it in Sweden.' Her ears ring from the reverberation and her throat's already sore. She's a Violinist, not a Scream Queen, so she settles for pounding her fist on the panel.

"Over here," Abby says and a moment later the door is banged in on her right and she must quickly back away. Glorious light invades her prison and Bill is the first one into the room.

"Hold the door!" she commands sharply enough that he and Abby are both startled into clutching it. When she sees the art upon it, she considers the choice apropos; it's Orpheus leading Eurydice out of the Underworld. "There's nothing to open it on this side and I've seen enough Sit-Coms to–"

" _Holy SHIT_!"

Bill stares wide eyed past her into the room, about twelve wide by eight deep, to where the light spills on the woman's body lying supine upon the floor.

x

Abby and Samantha step closer, ignoring Bill's whispered cries as he clutches the door to allow light to come in and for them to make their escape, but neither woman can consider such a thing. They stand two feet short of the body, careful to move slowly as the dust that had long ago pervaded the air has all settled to blanket the floor and the woman. Her shoes by the wall before them appear to have been thrown into place, one by the rear left corner. A white coat, jacket to anyone other than a Naval Officer, lies crumpled on the floor near her feet as though thrown into the spot, right sleeve across her left calf.

Dust comes in through the open door, visible in the light streaming in from the chandeliers, but this is minimal. Abby decides that the layer that grays everything is smooth enough that, if she can get an accurate measurement in micrometers, she can estimate how long the woman has lain here.

The corpse is desiccated, her wrinkled skin darkened to the color of parchment, shrink wrapped about her bones. Her face is a grotesque mask, prune wrinkled skin pulled tight to the skull, dry lips shrunk to dried gums, teeth displayed in a parody of a smile that chills the heart. The sunken eyelids are closed, sparing them the sight of eyeballs shrunk to the size of peas lost in the orbital bones. Only the hair, a halo of blonde, has been spared the rigors of mummification. Even her hands, one across her stomach, the other at her side, are shrunken tight about the flanges, the thin wrinkled fingers little wider than the small bones and the dust between them testifies to years spent in the still room.

She lays diagonally in the room with dusty white socked feet pointing to the door, head about two feet from the far wall. Both Abby and Sammy know Gibbs, when he sees this, will not be pleased with the conclusion that the woman had been dragged into this chamber but so it seems to them.

x

While Bill holds the door they inspect the mummified corpse in the stream of light. She's dressed in a white shirt with short black tie crossed under her collar and below the knee length white skirt. The soft epaulets on her shoulders each display two gold bars beside an oak leaf topped by an acorn. These and the white on black name tag pinned to the shirt, coupled with a medal bar containing nine awards, reveal all they need for now.

"Lieutenant A. Saunders," Abby says, her tone dead, "United States Naval Medical Corps."


	2. Call the Cavalry

Chapter Two  
Call the Cavalry

Jennifer Shepherd puts down a file folder onto her desk and rubs eyes too long strained by fluorescent lights rather than natural sunlight that had earlier shone through the large window behind her. Sunlight had started to show in the lightening sky through that window in the start of her day but had long ago faded even with the Summer extension of the day. Her days consistently overreach the hours of sunlight even in the last days of July. The twenty-seventh had come and is going and it had been no better than Wednesday had been and the hard approaching Friday offers no prospect of improvement.

The Agents of Gibbs' team and those guests who traveled with them have returned yesterday and this morning through Reagan Airport to face some very discordant music. Before they'd left they, together with Abby and Jimmy, had failed their Annual Psychiatric Evaluations.

Regulations dictated immediate Suspension from Duty, with or without pay at her discretion, which single option she'd rejected in favor of a rest cruise. They were to spend six days aboard the Pacific Princess out of Los Angeles to Mazatlan and Acapulco with no mysteries and no decisions more complex than between shuffleboard, dining or taking a nap. After six days of relaxation and inactivity other than - well, the Pacific Princess is called the Love Boat for a reason - they were to return, retake their evaluations, pass them and return to full Active Duty.

That they'd failed in this simple assignment she lays directly at the door of her Deputy SAIC. She doesn't know why he and his team had suddenly become interested in the financial records of a traveling troupe of Actors out of Miami, but she's sure Gibbs had been in the center of it. Giving that man an order to relax is like posting speed limit signs in Germany.

But it's just as well they're back, together with Abby and Jimmy Palmer, as cases already on the table consume the attentions of the eleven other MCR teams. And without Headquarters Division being up to full strength they'll be hard pressed to keep up with the problems that can arise in the Navy and Marines.

If she can manage to bring the team back with some Administrative slight-of-hand, they can take up some of the burden on the other teams and Headquarters might get a little ahead of the load, provided nothing happens to increase it.

Her phone rings and since Cynthia Sumner has long ago done the intelligent thing and gone home to her husband... "NCIS. Abby? Welcome back. But what on Earth are you calling in at-" she pulls her sleeve up to check her watch but never does see the instrument's face. "She Did _What_?"

xxx

"I'm really sorry," Abby tells the sixteen tuxedoed and gowned men and women as she blocks their passage through the hallway while Sammy and Bill take the already larger and growing crowd at the other end, and she tries to make her voice ring with sincerity when she really wants it to grate with frustration. "I insist..." fancy words fail her. "You have to stay back until the authorities arrive."

There are still people arriving. What woodwork are they coming out of?

"Young lady, do you have any idea what you're doing?" a gray bearded man demands more pompously than anyone she's heard in five years. "You have no right to tell us what to–"

It's been five minutes since Director Shepherd had figuratively blown her ear off and who knows how long it'll be before the cavalry arrives? "What I have is a badge," she bites, pulling for the second time ever a leather case from her black drawstring bag and yanking it open. She'd gotten it after an attempt to get into a hospital ER to see Gibbs and is glad she'd decided not to suffer her problems aboard the Pacific Princess ever again. "And this says you move away quietly and _stay_ away until I call you."

He sputters, so outraged he can't answer, which suits her very well because she feels that tonight she's going to have enough blow hard confrontations to last the decade.

x

"Now listen up," she says, glancing back to the far end of the hall and then confronting her own border, her voice hard enough to strain the walls. 'If one more wall opens up tonight I'm gonna scream at it.' "This house is now a Crime Scene and in a short time will be filled with Federal Agents. Now go somewhere, sit down, get comfortable," 'yeah right' "and we'll be with you as soon as we can."

A tuxedoed blond man of some thirty years had arrived at the rear and has steadily pressed through the still growing crowd to confront her. "What do you mean 'Crime Scene'?" he demands.

"A place where a crime happened," she says shortly. 'Jet lag will do this to you, I guess.' She's not entirely sure since she doesn't like to fly.

"Yeah, well, this is my house and there is no crime here. I don't know you, you're not a guest, so take your badge and beat it."

Guest of a substitute guest's guest, but she's not going to get into that. "This is your house?"

"Deaf as well as stupid."

"Who are you?"

"Paul Saunders. Who are you?"

"Special Agent Abigail Sciuto, NCIS," she snaps, feeling no guilt at the self-promotion. She'll do penance later. Forensic Scientist doesn't have the same ring when throwing her weight. Michelle's Rule #11 is 'When you want to throw your weight, use Gibbs as the ventriloquist.' "And we especially have to talk to you. But for now just stay back."

xxx

The ring of a telephone at what feels like only moments since turning off the bedroom lights is rarely a harbinger of good news for most people. When the apartment is that of an NCIS Federal Agent and an Episcopal Priest, rarely is an overstatement. They are both used to Emergency Alerts for these happen far too often, though they grant it's more frequent for him than her.

They had flown in from Los Angeles this morning (California time) following the Wednesday docking of the Pacific Princess in Los Angeles. He's still on Suspension since his entire team had individually failed their Psychological Evaluations and he isn't scheduled to work today - or anytime soon.

With long years of practice he'd never wanted to perfect, Tim is out of the King size bed immediately and finds the portable phone on his dresser by the red flashes, hurries to pick it up before the noise can disturb Shav. When the red flashes stop the windowless room is black, but the sounds of movement on the sheets behind him tell him he was much too late.

"McGee." "Where?" By touch he finds the pen and pad always kept beside the phone and scrawls what he hopes is a half legible location. "As soon as I can." He doesn't consider the oddity of this sudden deployment while they're forbidden to work; he works for NCIS, so the odd is commonplace and the downright outrageous happens at least once a week.

He presses the disconnect button and looks to the ceiling where the date and time are projected in dim numerals from a small device on the dresser. It's 10:56, which explains why he feels thoroughly unrested. They have plans for this coming morning for a picnic and more with the Palmers, their first coordinated weekday off in months.

The assigned cruise last week through yesterday doesn't count.

"A grá?" the melodious voice in the black room asks in a honeyed brogue, making the endearment sound like 'ah raw' to English accustomed ears.

"The mummified remains of a Naval Officer found in Bloomingdale, at a Historic Restoration, the McGregor mansion."

"You're kidding." That's his alter ego's alter ego.

"Wish I were," he says into the darkness that too often typifies his life.

x

He steps to the door and twists the dial beside it to ease the lights up to dim and turns back to his wife. She's laying on her side and wearing a very fetching pink negligee. He knows it's fetching because last night she'd used it to fetch him away from 'The Other Locked Room' and to bed where she'd made him forget most of the plot point that had kept him busy since dinner.

"I thought you were all Suspended."

"We've been Activated on Account."

"What do you mean 'on account'?"

"On account of we're the only team not on Assignment."

"Twelve teams," she reminds him pointedly.

"And now twelve cases."

"Figures. What slight-of-hand has Jennifer used to get you on the street?"

He can almost hear the rest, 'and out of this bed'? "When I know, I'll let you know."

"Will you need me to see the family?"

"Don't know yet that there is one."

She lays down on her back. "I guess this cancels the cave."

He catches the scent of her rose perfume tipped behind her ears to subtly enhance room and mood. It too had played its part in fetching him away from his novel. "Sorry."

But she waves it off and looks up at him. "I did what I could on the Princess because I figured today," she looks at the projected numbers above his head, "tomorrow was a long shot. We'd booked it more than an hour in advance."

"In the real world that would have worked in our favor." he says, but her sitting up halts him.

"Enkiss is not in the real world." She uses the rustle of the sheets to mask her under breath mutter as she gets up. "Agus tá sé lámhach lochán a bheith ag súil leo gan a tharraingt tú isteach obair tar éis a fhionraí agat."

However, though she hadn't wanted him to, he'd understood her, 'And it's shooting a pond to expect them not to pull you into work after suspending you,' and there's little point in answering the truth. But rather than answer and embarrass her, he can't break his gaze. Mid step toward the door and the shower beyond, he halts and decides once again that her week of shipboard strolls and all else in that very attractive bikini had been time well spent. Her short pink nightgown and panties are as sheer as a breath and seem to say 'I could pretend to hide something but I won't.'

"Timmy, what?"

"Errr, I'll call if we need you."

x

She can see in his eyes what he thinks of by 'need' as she steps around the foot of the bed. She'd be surprised and, she must admit, hurt if it weren't there, but while this is the place it's not at all the time.

That they'd finished the same a doze ago won't enter into this.

"I'll be ready when you want me," she says, testing if his mind is awake yet. She's never called to a Crime Scene, but always acts much later if there are bereaved family for her to console. Despite her best efforts, she's never called in to offer the final Services of the Church until after the autopsy.

She reaches out and pulls him into a good morning kiss that neither considers breaking for a long time.

"I always wan–"

His stop is hard enough to put his tongue into traction and, after a few moments where no reasonable word can come out, he turns and enters the bathroom.

Siobhan smiles at her retreating husband. Sometimes even a Wordsmith can be lost without his anvil.

But she won't abuse him by suggesting that they shower together after their late evening workout. As much fun as that is, this is very much not the time.

Besides, they may well see one another at some point today, and then they must both be professional; colleagues rather than husband and wife. They've been through this too often for it not to be routine. First come the Investigators, then Grief Counselors from Marines, Navy or herself. She usually makes it to the bereaved families last – on the occasions when she's called.

xxx

Ziva David never likes to travel. No, she admits to herself, that is not true. She enjoys traveling, but it is the return home and the resumption of burdens and concerns that have been set aside for several days that she dislikes. A week ago she had been summoned into MTAC for a very unpleasant announcement by the Director that she, together with her entire team plus Jimmy Palmer and Abby Sciuto, had failed their annual Psychological Evaluations. Not only did she have to contend with the sting of that humiliation – she does not like to fail in anything and this is more taxing – but the consequences had been Suspension – fortunately with pay – for an undetermined period.

The Director had devised a plan. She had called in a favor owed to her by the Captain of a Cruise Ship, the Pacific Princess, and the seven of them, together with Tim's wife and Tony's most serious and long lasting paramour, had a week of rest and relaxation aboard the eponymous 'Love Boat' with, as Shepherd had said, no decisions more of note than shuffleboard, dining or having a nap.

That that plan had collapsed within two days had been no one's fault – at least no one in NCIS.

But she had found some pleasures to enjoy and yesterday the cruise had ended, those who had not flown back immediately did so today and now, with a week's worth of grocery shopping done, she has no established plans beyond catching up on a few personal matters while waiting for the call that will tell her whether, and when, she will still have a job.

There are as many opinions of God, she reflects as the phone on her table takes that moment to announce itself, as there are people, but she does believe that God has something of an ironic sense of humor. And when she reads the name on the display screen, she has to question if it is her turn to provide today's amusement. "Yes, Gibbs?" "Is the Evaluation scheduled already?" "We are Suspended, are we not?" "I _detest_ the way your American Bureaucrats do things."

xxx

Tony DiNozzo had driven Jeanne Benoit to his apartment for a special home cooked meal. Since his home was first on the route it was easy to convince her not to end their week off too soon.

That dinner had led to a special desert wasn't planned, but neither was it objected to. Now with his pressed ears cooking, the pressure so great he hears her groans and cries more through her thighs than through air, he works diligently to increase the fervor of those barely audible cries.

Joining them, in fact he realizes they've been accompanying them for quite some time, are ringing bells. He'd ignore them but once they've impinged on his awareness he can't unhear them.

It takes considerable effort to push her trapping thighs enough so he may hear the bells more clearly, but the effort to move away is countered by fingers that clutch his hair more fervently as he fights to move.

x

Success means the sacrifice of uncountable follicles, and his reaching for the telephone on the night table is accompanied by a very aggravated growl.

"DiNozzo."

/DiNozzo, unstuff your ears!/ For an instant Tony's heart flips over until he realizes that while the boss does seem to know everything, there are limits.

Aren't there?

He sits on the edge of the bed. The clock on his dresser reads five after eleven. "What've we got?" He looks left to Jeanne, who glares at him while trying to substitute for his ministrations.

A few moments of barely credible summation. "Be right there." He hangs up the phone. It's the first time he can recall ending a call on Gibbs but the man has more calls to make at this ungodly hour while he has a much harder thing to say.

"Wait!" Jeanne demands, attention broken and now she's back into the room. "You'll be right _there_?"

"Sorry, honey." He shifts his weight forward, about to stand. "You know how–" Her hands clench his shoulders; he's yanked back and slams onto the bed and she straddles him. Her moist crotch pins his hips as she leans both hands hard on his chest.

"You bring me on a cruise and for nearly two days we're apart because you have to work and we can't use our cabins; then you invite me here, work me up and then you think you're going to leave?"

"I have to. Gi–"

She comes down hard. "Sc _-rew_ Gibbs."


	3. The Secret Room

Chapter Three  
The Secret Room

Leroy Jethro Gibbs arrives at the McGregor Mansion, home of the famed Saunders family, having summoned his team along the way. That Jennifer Shepherd had reactivated them in defiance of NCIS Regulations is odd enough, but as he parks at the apex of the curving drive and gives detailed instructions to the somewhat bemused Valet who approaches to take control of his yellow and black Hemi, he finds things far odder.

Upon entering the three story, overly ornate building, he's waved to the right rear corner of the opulent foyer, easily half again as big as the bullpen and too ornate for any living man's taste, by Abby Sciuto.

He's happy to see her and walks past a wide marble staircase and past a man of about twenty five years who wears a black tuxedo that sports a third degree Knight of Columbus pin. The young man is posted to keep anyone from following down a blue hallway and Gibbs feels his confidence that the situation is under control peak. It crashes into rubble as she reveals that everyone in the gala had been kept away from the scene but had been otherwise uncontrolled.

"I'm the only one here with a badge, though I've flashed it like once since I got it. I kept them away and probably stretched my authority, such as it is, in doing that."

"We'll see. Where's Metro?" This is the first time in months, the Pacific Princess excepted, where NCIS had come on a Crime Scene not crowded with local LEOs. He also doesn't want to ask what she's doing with her badge pinned beside a far too generous and low plunging neckline that he'd seen most recently on the Princess. Save that for Lab talk.

"I didn't call them." The look he gives her is usually enough to make a heavyweight boxer back off, so of course it has no effect upon the scientist. "Like I said when I banished a house full of people, including the owner, from this hall, I was the only one with a badge and I was calling in the proper authorities."

He considers having her call them in, but decides that "They can wait."

"That's what I thought."

"But you kept these people together anyway?" In fact, she's restricted them not at all. He's trying to decide if she needs a whack on general principle, but he never has and doubts he ever will – at least not on her head.

"Most of these people are here for the unveiling of a restored historic mansion and, when you see the scene, you'll see how unlikely it is that anyone here did the deed."

"Then let's see it."

"I thought you'd never ask, Sahib. Right over here."

xx

She leads him through the hall which, in his opinion, could double as an Art Gallery for the number of paintings painted directly upon the long walls, the marble pillars with strings of bas relief pearls hanging white on royal blue and the painted vaulted ceiling. He sees Samantha Sky, clothed in a blue dress with matching silk shawl, guarding the far end.

She turns at their approach and her face alights. "Hi, Gi– Agent Gibbs." He's heard she occasionally refers to him as 'Gibbsie' but she's smart enough never to dare say it to his face. This time it had been close.

"What are you doing here, Sky?"

"Well, Bill invited me, then I invited Abby. She didn't invite anyone so it kind of fell apart then." She points behind him. "That's Bill." He looks back to see the young man has followed them into the hall. "William Marsters, meet my other boss' boss, Deputy Special Agent-in-Charge Leroy Jethro Gibbs." Their greeting is cordial rather than his sharp inquisition of Sky. "Bill's an Artist and we're here to see the opening of this place. We met at NCIS and he–" Gibbs' upraised hand silences her.

He'd learned a great deal in the past two weeks. The man had stood up under the thorough background check he gives to everyone who has access to someone who has access to NCIS and its agents. He could tell Sky a wealth of information she never imagined.

Let her find out for herself.

For now he only wants to know from her "What do you have to do with this Crime Scene?"

"I found it."

For the moment he's satisfied with this. "You know the rules?"

"Uh, enough of them, I guess. Sir."

"I'll talk to you later."

"Gibbs–" Abby starts to protest but is silenced by his look. No unauthorized non-agents this close to a Crime Scene. He doesn't refer to Sky, who has worked many over the past months. She's to keep Marsters away and occupied, yet he does know they three discovered the scene so he and his team will debrief all three - after he's seen the site and examined the evidence without interruption. "Go back to guarding this hall."

"Yes, sir," Sky says. A glance back shows Marsters knows enough to comply as well.

x

He turns to Abby. "Where?"

She gives him the kind of smile that warns him he's going to have a bad night. "This way," she invites and heads for the blue wall with the painting of Orpheus and Eurydice leaving, or trying to leave, the Underworld, set between white Corinthian columns midway between the hall ends. There are several images painted upon the walls over the strings of pearls between each of the columns.

When she bumps her shoulder hard against the left side of the wall a double wide door he hadn't seen between the columns opens. He waves her away and lets the wide door close again. The edges extend to the columns and he sees that the light from the widely spaced chandeliers above their heads causes inch wide shadows to lay upon the blue wall flush with each column, effectively obscuring the tight seams unless someone knows to look for them. He bangs the wall with the heel of his hand, has to hit harder before it pops open and he's certain he's going to regret the night.

"Sammy will have to hold it," Abby tells him as they look into the dim room. "This can't be opened from the inside."

"Latch will be on the inside," he counters as he pulls a thin penlight from his jacket pocket. "They didn't build rooms that couldn't be opened, too dangerous. Someone could die if trapped in here." He finds the latch in the upper right corner of the tall portal, eight and a half feet up. Sky couldn't have reached it.

"Oh, yeah." Comes from getting involved in a Scene and having to fight to defend it. The light falls upon the woman's body more than halfway to the back wall. "Well, someone did die."

Perhaps this woman couldn't reach it either?

xx

Gibbs uses his penlight to examine the mummified body of the Navy Lieutenant, grayed by a thin layer of dust and shrink wrapped by her own skin. It's impossible to guess her original coloring or complexion, her skin is dark as parchment and wrinkled, squeezed to the bone, thoroughly dried out over what could be months or years in the arid, dusty chamber. It's clear that none of tonight's guests had killed this woman today, but had anyone who's here tonight done so in the past? For tonight he'll gather contact information and let each person go in turn.

No one can be ruled out. The call he'd gotten from Jennifer Shepherd had related that Samantha Sky had fallen into a secret room and discovered the body by accident.

The only thing he can be sure of, and this from the dust that has settled upon and around the corpse in the evidently very still room, is that the woman had not been moved in a considerable time.

x

He steps back out, looks to the young woman at the end of the hall. "Sky."

She approaches and he can see she's making an effort to maintain a serious expression. That she's the happiest person he's ever met, though Ducky had proven that she derives no help from artificial means to maintain a state of perpetual ecstasy, makes him appreciate the effort. She is, at least, learning appropriate Crime Scene gravitas, undoubtedly under Ducky's and Maura Isles' tutorage. While banter and often bad jokes are the norm in dealing with stressful situations, Sky's normal is other people's extreme. "Tell me what happened."

"Abby and I were talking when a bunch of kids, maybe five to eight years old, came barreling down the hall. I jumped back out of the way, hit the wall and kept on going. Inside it was pitch black, all I could see was a really thin border, almost thin as paper. I could hear Bill and Abby when I pressed my ear to the wall, they barely heard me when I screamed at them."

"You screamed at them?"

"I wanted out," she answers with the inevitable grin. He'd known she couldn't hold it for long. "You can get in easy, but getting out is a bitch."

He steps back inside and examines the inner side of the door. The latch in the upper corner above his head will allow the door to be pushed in from the outside but then it has to be pulled down from the jam to allow the portal to be pulled. At six one this is no obstacle now that he knows it's there but Sky, at five two, even if she could have found it in the dark she wouldn't have been able to reach it.

Sky looks to Abby holding the wall open. "I could get something to hold it," she offers. Gibbs doesn't answer. "I'll get something to hold it open." She steps to the other side of the hall. There are two doors on each side of this length of hall, and a moment later she returns with a chair, which she places against the disguised door. Since there is little closing pressure, the weight of the chair is quite sufficient as Abby relinquishes her burden.

"All right," Gibbs tells her, "when DiNozzo or whoever gets here first, you two go somewhere and keep your ears open."

"Yes, sir."

xx

It doesn't take long for Ziva to arrive, and she's brought a roll of yellow 'Crime Scene' tape to stretch across both ends of the hallway, so he sends Sky and Marsters away to wait in the Drawing Room.

Many of the guests at the opening gala who have not left have congregated in the Drawing Room to the left of the Foyer, a space normally adequate for about ten people. When the couple enters, they can't depend upon anonymity as another pair of guests as everyone in the room has encountered them as the ones who have staked out a portion of the building as a 'No Entry Zone', refusing all explanations and reason. Now several people turn to them and the questions come too quickly from too many sides until Bill Marsters calls for silence so they can answer the first.

"What's happening?"

"I'm sorry, I wish I could tell you but I'm not allowed."

"What do you mean you're not allowed?"

"When are we going to get out of here?" another man demands before that answer can be started.

Sammy shrugs. "There are Federal Agents out there. It's out of all of our hands. I'm sorry."

"Federal Agents?" Another woman demands. "What Federal Agents? From what Agency?"

"NCIS."

" _Cattle Inspectors_?"

"Navy Police," Bill says, unable to understand this jump in logic.

The woman turns to the assembled guests. "Is anyone here Navy?"

x

Samantha turns away and makes a bee line for an unoccupied chair, hands pressed to her head, feeling the headache that had been building for half an hour go from kettle drums to hammer on anvil.

She sits down but looks up to find Bill standing beside her, looking about the room, anywhere but at her. He hasn't looked at her much and when he did his eyes had that same stunned discomforted look they do now. "You're freaked."

He waves it off. "No, I'm not freaked." But then his eyes meet hers. "I'm freaked."

"I'm sorry." They'd guarded the Crime Scene, not an intended part of their date, for 45 minutes and hadn't been able to say much to one another. The knowledge there was a corpse on the other side of the wall they'd protected had been a heavy weight. "This is the left side of my life."

"I was happy with your right side." She plays Fifth Violin with the Washington Renaissance Orchestra, a very normal and reasonable lifestyle. "You _told_ me about this, but it's still taking a bit to process."

She'd thought, she realizes now that it was naively, that her sexual preferences would be the sticking point in their relationship. She knows now that it's a far cry from his knowing her as a Doctor and Apprentice Medical Examiner to encountering the dead body she's going to autopsy in the morning because Jimmy Palmer has Friday off. She tries so hard not to let her tone be as plaintive as she feels. "I love you."

It's too many seconds without an answer.

xx

Gibbs has called his team in based upon distance, McGee and David from Silver Spring across the Maryland border, Palmer from Georgetown and DiNozzo from a few miles distant, so it's with considerable annoyance that he sees his Senior Field Agent arrive last. "Get lost, DiNozzo?"

"Had a bit of trouble getting out, boss. Won't happen again."

"No, it won't."

x

The agents normally travel with duplicate Investigation kits suitable for gathering evidence on scenes when they don't leave from Headquarters (Rule Number 29). "David, you and Palmer photograph and record. DiNozzo, sketch."

He examines the body as closely as he can for the distance. There are two sets of footprints approaching and leaving the body but "You see what's missing?"

"You mean besides the really, really thin layer of dust for a room with no air currents?" Abby asks with a wry smile.

"No footprints," DiNozzo acknowledges. The prints that Abby and Sammy had made are the only ones to disturb the smoothness. He reaches down, takes the closest tip of the hem of her skirt and lifts it an inch to expose the clean floor. "This room was well cared for, swept at least once, before she was put in here."

"If this is a secret room," Gibbs says, "who had the secret?"

x

The room is dim from the indirect light from the hallway chandeliers yet with every flash of the large camera the body stands out in sharp detail. Michelle stands beside Ziva, notepad in her hand, making a log of every shot based on Ziva's words; time, shot number, flash details, aperture, shutter speed, distance and all the other essential details that will guide the investigation in the days to come.

The body cannot be moved until DiNozzo has sketched the scene to provide perspective that film cannot but even with Jimmy on site they must wait until Ducky comes to examine it. Even in the presence of his Deputy, and coincidentally with his Apprentice as well, the Senior ME has the legal obligation to make the Official Determination of the death.

Gibbs, of course, has his own ideas of priorities and he examines the uniform jacket draped / dropped across the woman's legs. Any examination of this will in no way affect the body or the Examiner's determinations. Ninety nine percent of Active Duty Sailors carry their Navy ID cards clipped to the inner breast pocket and Saunders is no exception. From the laminated card he identifies 'A Saunders' as Annette and he hadn't been far wrong about her appearance. Her assignment is, or was, Norfolk.

"McGee. Annette Saunders of Norfolk. Look her up."

The man is their walking electronic encyclopedia, his hand held PADD connected to most Military databases and websites. He doesn't have to wait too much longer than a 'try my patience' period.

"Lieutenant Annette Saunders was reported AWOL twenty one years ago," he announces.

Twenty one years ago the Military hadn't switched to UA and the Agency was NIS before the clarifying 'Criminal' was added. He'll have to read the Lead Agent's report to determine what, if anything, was known back then. With any luck, the Lead Agent is still around or alive to shed some light.

x

"Gibbs?"

"What is it, Abs?"

"There's a Saunders in the Drawing Room. I didn't pull him out because I was trying to keep anyone from getting any clues to what happened." She tenses, her whole body tight, eyes clenched and she holds her breath.

"I'll talk to him," he says, stepping to the disguised door. "McGee, you're with me."

"Where to, boss?"

"To cull the herd." Jimmy Palmer will remain with the corpse. Once the body and everything else in the room has been photographed and measured in situ he can start such determinations as he can.

Abby relaxes so profoundly she's not sure if she'd fainted and hadn't realized it.

x

He is two seconds in the Drawing Room to the left of the Foyer when a blond man in a black tuxedo and matching mood confronts him. "You the boss of these idiots? What are they doing? What the hell is going on here?"

"This is a Crime Scene, Mister..."

"Paul Saunders. And as I already told your minions this is my house and not a Crime Scene. We've been too patient but now I want you and your trained seals out of my house."

"Saunders, do you know an Annette Saunders?"

He blinks, halted. "I... I know only one, my sister, but she's – she - she disappeared years ago. No one's heard from her in years. I don't even..."

"Come with me." He starts to turn.

"Wait. What does... how does any of this have anything to do with my _sister?_ "

Gibbs has no intention of answering this in a crowded room. Those around him have heard entirely too much already. He turns and leaves, glancing back to McGee who is taking the first of the guest's statements. "Take names and contacts, then cut them loose."

In the foyer he turns to the confused man, all senses alert. "We found your sister."

"What? Where? I don't understand. She's been missing for twenty years and you just come in and say you found her? Where?"

He glances to the door to the right of the marble staircase. "Down that hall."

x

When Gibbs leads Saunders under the Crime Scene tape and to the open wall, their key witness looks as though he's about to faint, even though from this angle they cannot see into the unlit room.

"What the hell is this?"

He makes sure he can see Saunders' eyes. "You don't know?"

"No, I _don't_ know. What the hell happened to the _wall?"_

He immediately leads the man in the opposite direction and brings him through the first door he comes to, which by the furnishings he takes to be a den. Rather than the desk directly in from the door, the Investigator brings him to the chair set by the right side wall, seeing from the empty space that the other chair had been taken from there to hold the hidden door open.

Even in the moments of activity, Paul Saunders has regained none of his original color.

"What happened back there?" is the first thing he can ask.

"You didn't know there was a room behind that wall?"

 _"No!_ "

"That's where we found your sister."

"What?" He still isn't in the room with the Investigator. "You mean she's been here all this _time_? Twenty _years?_ "

Gibbs gives no answer, being more interested in what Saunders will reveal.

x

Paul puts his hands to his face, seemingly to try to hide from the reality. "Oh my God. This is... I don't know what this is."

"What do you remember?"

The face he pulls from his hands is blank. "Remember?"

"Your sister was reported AWOL from the Navy. What happened?"

"I... I don't know." It takes him several moments to recover well enough to speak coherently. "I was ten, I think. No, I was nine. I knew then something was happening, but I didn't know until my father... my father explained it to me. Back then I didn't understand. I knew she was gone, missing, but it never dawned on me until I got used to the idea–."

He'd appeared horrified before, this is worse.

"My God. I just said I got used to the idea that my sister was gone. How horrible is that? But... but it's true, I guess. I knew her for... for a few years, and now she's gone for more than twice that long. After a while... I got older... I started to forget the de– the details. How she sounded. How she looked. How..." He launches himself out of the chair, paces rapidly around the room and then turns back to Gibbs. "This is a nightmare. I don't know what to think. I can't think." His expression changes, locks onto desperate hope. "Are you sure it's her? Could there be a mistake?"

"She's wearing her Naval uniform. Our Medical Examiner and Forensic Scientist will confirm her identity, but for now we're pretty certain."

"Can I see her?"

"You sure you want to?" He tries to make his voice convey the warning and the spirit to go out of the man. Saunders slumps into that lost soul he'd been moments before.

"I don't know."

x

"Come on."

Gibbs has decided that if Saunders can make a positive Identification, they can proceed. He leads the younger man out of the room and down the short hall with its large paintings each between a white marble half column to where the opening in the decorated blue wall stands stark, black within as though a door to the Underworld from which Orpheus and Eurydice seek escape. They stop at the threshold. Jimmy and Abby, partially blocking the door as they await the completion of the photos, stand aside. The women stop their work as they perceive the man's presence.

"My God," Saunders whispers, unable to tear his eyes from the dark corpse. The years have turned the woman's flesh to the color of dried leather, her skin deeply wrinkled and squeezed to the bones. Her face is the worst of all, withered to her skull, lips drawn back in a hideous grimace.

Saunders breaks away out of the room, hurries across the hall, grips the wall as though he would climb into it. Gibbs stands at his side and waits.

"This can't be happening. This can't be happening! Can't be..."

Gibbs can appreciate the wish. He's heard it expressed so many times, has felt it too many times himself though he'd kept the expression of it within. He also knows he's going to get little more out of the man tonight.

"You have a place to stay?"

The question brings Saunders back into the house and he looks back, bewildered. "I can't–?"

"No, you can't."

He thinks for a few moments and Gibbs can see his mind starting to resume its function when called upon to fulfill this demand. "A hotel, I guess."

From his shield case Gibbs pulls out a business card. "I'll have an Agent drive you." By no stretch is the man fit to drive, and DiNozzo may glean additional information once Saunders' mind comes back. "Call me when you get checked in. This way we'll be able to keep you up to date."

He doesn't reveal now that the flow of information will be in the opposite direction from what Saunders thinks.


	4. No One Expects the Spanish Inquisition

Chapter Four  
No One Expects the Spanish Inquisition

Abby and Samantha had gone home to change, and for Sammy to be sure a very disconcerted Bill Marsters got back to his home before Abby drove her on the last leg back. Now, as the sun lightens the eastern sky, Abby parks the 'Forenzchic', her extra souped up red 1931 Ford Coupe Hot Rod, in the underground garage. Sammy Sky slides her silver Nissan Altima into place next to her and touches the control to slide the sun roof closed.

"I'm not sure if it was worth the extra breeze," she says as she gets out to join her tall friend, brushing the bangs of her pale blonde pixie hair back into place.

"You're the one who wanted to be a hot chick," Abby tells her with a suggestive smile.

"Hot chick, yes. Air cooked, no."

"Well, when you get to Autopsy you can always slip into one of the coolers." She checks her watch. It's 6:17 but "Gibbs is going to want answers before he asks the questions."

"Then I guess we'd both better get to work. Ducky and Jimmy did bring the body in overnight but Jennifer wants me to sub for Jimmy today and–."

"I thought you didn't do Scenes with a man you know, especially a married one."

"I'll _see_ you later," she says archly, walking away from her broiled friend.

xx

Abby inspects her lab minutely and critically, seeking something to aggravate her but Ruby Rae is not William Cesario, who had substituted for her last year during her Hawaiian vacation and had rearranged everything, requiring her to spend her first two hours back, even with McGee's help, putting the room in order again. Ruby knows where everything belongs and the fate of those who make changes to her Sanctum Sanctorum. People have learned, to their great pain, the consequences of messing it up. Tony, Tim and Ziva only made that mistake once, and to their credit and fortune they are fast learners.

But there's nothing out of place, no reason to take her substitute of this past week to task.

Said substitute does, coincidently, walk in at that very moment, her arrival heralded by the rapid series of beeps from the clear sliding door. The petite redhead halts, quite surprised to see her lab coated counterpart. "Abby?"

"Sur _prise_."

"Surprise is right." 'And not a pleasant one', Abby can read in her eyes. She can't blame her. "I thought you were out for at least another week."

She has no idea how long her Suspension and Evaluation will last, but this is the woman's nice way of saying she isn't supposed to be here.

"The reports of my vacation are exaggerated."

"What's going on?"

Ruby had been called in all the way from Edenvale last Wednesday morning to cover her for two weeks until the results of her revised Evaluation - which she hopes will be taken without delay but she hasn't heard a word - come in. So far, she hasn't even been scheduled to be tested yet and will brain the first person who takes a philosophical tone about that.

"Gibbs, through the Director, put me back to work. Last night we stumbled on a Crime Scene. Well, actually Sammy Sky stumbled onto it - literally."

"Why am I always the last to know these things?"

"Don't sweat it. I don't think many people do. In the meantime how many cases do you have?"

"Eleven."

"Eleven! What's been going on while I was at sea?"

"NCIS has been sinking."

"Never mind. We'll work it out. What's the most pressing?"

"The first nine." Abby watches her valiantly fight a flinch. "Everyone wants their reports the previous day. This place is so not Edenvale."

"No, I spoil them. Comes from working 80 hours a week when I don't do weekends." This week she certainly will, even with two Scientists to get through everything. "Let's look at the load."

xxx

When the glass and steel pneumatic doors sigh open and Jimmy looks back, expecting to see Agent Gibbs on one of his too early rush Report runs, he's surprised to see Samantha Sky enter. She stops short under the back-lit white sign she'd given to Ducky some months ago, the three foot long wooden framed white frosted glass rectangle rendering black Latin words HIC LOCUS EST UBI MORS GAUDET SUCCURRERE VITAE: 'This is where death rejoices to teach the living.'

"What are you doing here?" he demands.

"Mister Palmer," Ducky says reprovingly from the other side of the silver table, the still clothed dessicated body of Annette Saunders between them.

He turns back, aware now how his tone had sounded. "I'm sorry, Doctor."

x

"What's going on?" she asks, looking from her mentor to Jimmy, putting her distress at the sight of the man into every syllable. The white uniformed body between the men gleams under the intense directed light and the portable X-ray machine stands at the head of the table, ready for use.

"I'm sorry," Jimmy says. "It's just that I wasn't expecting you."

"'No one expects the Spanish Inquisition'," she quips, recollecting Monty Python. "But I wasn't expecting _you._ Isn't this your last day off?" Even with yesterday's discovery, there was no reason for him to cancel his day off. She's perfectly capable–

"Oh, yeah." He and 'Chelle and the McGees were supposed to be enjoying a picnic and an afternoon of fun - until this. Today was supposed to have been their last relaxing day before the weekend and their official return to work on the 30th.

"I fear that is my fault," Ducky confesses. "When we received this case last night, after you and Abby had left with your friend, both the Palmers' Leaves were terminated early and I forgot to alert you. My apologies."

"No harm; I had no plans if not being here other than to stay four feet from an air conditioner." She looks to the mummified corpse, particularly noting the emaciated legs in loose hose and loose white socks over shrunken feet. There had been so much lost with all the moisture in the body that the white socks hang loose about her feet, but she tries not to consider that. "You've a full crew to work on you today," she tells the woman.

"You can make yourself useful," the older man assures her, gesturing to the mirrored store room beside his desk. "Get undressed–"

 _"Finally_ something I'm good at."

Ducky looks like this is going to be a very long morning. "Get dressed in your scrubs and then grab the clipboard. Today's work will be slow and quite a tedious process."

xxx

Gibbs and his team do not have the luxury of beginning their day with the dawn, having driven their cars in from the Crime Scene and being able to do little more than make time for breakfast before they must delve into a two decade old case. Since breakfast for him is usually coffee while a large breakfast is an extra coffee, Gibbs is already at his desk when the bell, loud in the sparsely populated Operations Division, announces the deposit of his four agents.

"What do you have?" he asks as they file into the Bullpen. They exchange glances, none willing to be the one to announce the obvious.

Michelle holds up a confection box. "An extra croissant. Want?"

"What I want is information on our mummy."

They collectively look to their Senior Field Agent, who sometimes dislikes the perks that come with the job. "This point, I don't even have a puppy." Gibbs' glare reveals how bad an idea the Rock and Roll pun had been as the agents reach their desks. "Come on, boss, we have an ID and a decade. The woman was AWOL because they didn't use UA way back then."

Fortunately his stall lasted long enough for Ziva to call up some initial information. "Lieutenant Annette Saunders was reported AWOL 21 years, 3 months and 5 days ago. When the family reported she had not returned home after her shift at Norfolk, her CO made an initial attempt to contact her, then notified NIS. There has been no Final Disposition on her case."

"I can tell you something about the Saunders family back then," Tony says, "which you already guessed from the house. They were loaded plus dripping in it."

"Paul Saunders heads up a company affiliated with Canon," McGee says.

This Gibbs already knows. He'd gleaned that information last night before DiNozzo drove the man out to a hotel. "What's his company do?"

"Still researching that. Canon started out making copiers but expanded widely a long time ago."

"According to Saunders," Tony continues, "the Renovation and Open House were about keeping a place in the Society Circuit. Apparently it's good for business. He didn't have to make the place into a showplace and charge admission for tours, that's just for pocket change and to give the staff something to do. He maintains a Butler, Cook and all-around Maid, but if not for the extra work plus docents to guide the tourists that this project is going to bring he'd've had to trim things. It's a big place but apparently tooling around a three story mansion _can_ get boring."

"You should know. What else?"

DiNozzo looks to the rest of the team, each of whom has been in the building for a half hour, most of that time taken up by breakfast. "That's about it, boss."

Gibbs gets up, comes around his desk and heads for the opening between Tony and Ziva's desks. "When I get back from Abby."

xx

When Gibbs enters the Forensics Lab through the back entrance Abby stands bent over her free standing workstation; why he doesn't know because what's before her is on display on the plasma screen mounted on the wall beyond the station.

It's part of Abby's continuing mystique that she can be old school and cutting edge simultaneously. In fact, a cutting edge is what she's using on the evidence as she continues, her back to him.

"Be right with you, Gibbs," she announces though she hasn't looked up or away from her meticulous work.

The sample is an irregularly shaped, age browned strip, quite thin yet she's carefully creating layers and separating one from another.

She's wearing her black miniskirt festooned with dozens of large safety pins and a black tee shirt with two large wings displayed on her back, a bat's wing on her left, a white dove's wing on her right.

"Hello, Agent Gibbs."

He does a double take to his left to the young redhead at the Evidence table, surprised to see Ruby Rae in her white lab coat. "Good morning."

"Ruby's assisting today," Abby says, not looking away from the strip which consumes her attention, "because no one told her we're back. Come to think of it, no one from HR told me either."

"You're back."

"Thank you. And because we have an even dozen cases to solve before lunch. Since she's scheduled to spend next week here too, since I'm not back, she's staying."

Focused on his case, all he can say to the young woman is "Thank you."

"You're welcome."

Abby stops now and puts the implement down beside the desiccated flesh. "So, Gibbs, what's new?"

x

Since she rarely asks this, he decides it's a bad sign. She turns and he sees the rest of the tee shirt is a white halo that rests upon her right breast while a pair of red horns seem to spring from her left breast. Arched over them, starting from white and gradually turning to red, is the question 'Dare you turn this Angel into a Devil?'

He decides that, as usual, the best thing to do with one of her outrageous shirts is to ignore it.

He can tell she's disappointed as she turns to the plasma screen where the piece is still displayed. "What's that?"

"A sample from Lieutenant Saunders' left arm. I'm going to see if I can run a DNA analysis to lock in a positive ID but don't get your hopes up. It's only slightly moister than the Café's meat loaf."

"I have every faith."

"Awww, Gibbs, that's so sweet." She looks to Ruby. "Isn't he sweet?"

Since sweet doesn't characterize her interactions several months ago with the towering agent, she elects to say nothing.

When he steps beside Abby and Rae joins them, he sees that the section of flesh that had appeared to be more than a square foot is less than two inches across. "What've you got?"

"Not a whole heck of a lot, not until I hydrate this, which is why I'm separating the layers."

"How long will that take?"

"NCIS isn't television; not even I get results during the Station Breaks. I'm splitting the initial samples Ducky sent up between General Gas Chromatograph and Major Mass Spectrometer but it's a pot so don't stare at it waiting for it to boil."

"Montgomery Scott always doubled his estimates so he'd look like a miracle worker."

She gapes at him. "Gibbs! Ten thousand points for the obscure cultural reference." That reference had been from a single 'Next Generation' episode, not from the Classic series or a movie.

"Credit Hollis. What've you got?"

"Hours of work before my first answer."

"I always thought you were our Miracle Worker."

"I don't look good with a mustache."

"Abby."

"Gibbs, right now all I have is performance anxiety. While we were at the McGregor mansion – and by the way I really have to tease McGee all day today – I got a callback from the Director putting me back to work and screw the Evaluation for today but I haven't even said 'hello' to half my team. I've told you more than once 'you cannot rush Science'. You can yell at it, you can argue with it, you can spank it if you're into that and I know someone on your team who is–"

"So do I."

"What are you doing knowing? But you cannot rush it. I promise, when I know, you'll know." He's halfway to the door. "Gibbs?" makes him turn back. "What's the story with our Evaluations? I spent a week thinking I was Suspended, now we're all back but by the rules we're still not."

"When I know," he watches her frustration peak, "you'll know."

xxx

Gibbs steps through the glass and metal pneumatic doors, displeased to see Palmer and Sky working on the stripped corpse of Lieutenant Saunders and Ducky nowhere in sight. Getting answers from a mummified corpse takes so much longer than from a fresh one; the team could be most of the week on this.

The smaller of the two still wears the pink ballet slippers cross tied at her ankles to hold the blue scrubs pants bunched. Apparently they _still_ don't make scrubs in her size, too long in the pants, too tight in the shirt. He suspects she's going to continue wearing this eye searing fashion until Ducky stops her – which may be never since she's not even supposed to be here today. She turns and pushes up the clear plastic face shield.

"Hi Gibbsi–." Her cut-off isn't fast enough this time. "Special Agent Gibbs."

He looks past her, over her head in fact, to Palmer, a new source of annoyance. How dare the man be grinning at him as though able to read his desire to put distance between himself and Sky, preferably several States?

x

He fixes his glare on Palmer, mentally pushing Sky aside even as he steps next to her near the corpse's head. "What can you tell me about Saunders?" he asks over the woman's dessicated body.

The white on white uniform had been removed and rests in individual plastic Evidence bags in a plastic bucket, the load ready to be brought up to Abby. All that is left is parchment dry flesh pulled tight about the bones.

Sky smiles up at him. "She's dead."

He hadn't had much patience with her overnight and this morning he's tired, so he lets his stare silently tell her that though she did find the woman she'd scored no points with him in doing so. One of the perks to Suspension is being able to sleep in, so being here this morning isn't the joy it usually is. "What are you doing here, Sky?"

"Simple. Jimmy's off today with his wife and the McGees."

Yes, that had been the plan, but as soon as she discovered plans have changed she should have turned around and gone home. True, she found the corpse but Ducky – where is Ducky? – and Palmer are well capable of dealing with it.

But Ducky probably had her stay, having a use for her, yet he's sure the man will soon return to impose order. If he can't get through to her since she knows he can't inflict head slaps and is nonetheless too damned cheerful, at least she respects Ducky.

No, he decides, that's neither true nor fair. She does respect him, she's just proven she's not intimidated by him.

However, she wisely erases the smile from her face.

"We can definitely confirm that this is Annette Saunders," she says.

"How?"

"Well, aside from the name tag and the ID card and the epaulets with the oak leaves with acorns sitting on them and the other things, even her bra is 3501.6ed and her underwear is 3501.100ed, her name and initials. It's her."

"Thank you." Very soon he intends to teach her the meaning of 'too much information'.

x

Palmer raises his shield. "X-rays," he begins, using the pause to lead Gibbs over to the light board where four dark x-ray exposures are attached. They show straight and curved bones in white upon black, "show that Lieutenant Saunders had a fractured and healed fourth left rib and right radius."

"How long ago?"

"That's hard to say. You can see the spots, here and here, where the breaks were because of the buildup of calcium surrounding the breaks." The bones have a raised portion, almost like a football seen in cross section, about the areas but the breaks themselves are hardly discernible even with the best of effort due to the shielding effect of the extra calcium. "Each is fully healed. Perhaps Abby can tell how old the calcium deposits are. Then again, when we get inside we may be able to tell."  
"But these didn't have anything to do with whatever killed her?"

"Not really." He leads Gibbs back to the table. "But I can tell you, show you actually, that she also has over forty burns on various parts of her torso." He indicates irregularly shaped small discolorations on her already discolored flesh, dark spots from one to two inches in size, starting near her collar bone and spotting her down to the bottom of her ribs. The marks, which he already knows are deceptively smaller than they had originally been, are spaced in no pattern he can discern, have no particular shape and he can't even figure their original color on the dried out, contracted and then stretched skin.

As the body lost moisture two decades ago it had started to shrink and contract, then some of the skin stretched over the bones, in particular the ribs, in unnatural manners. Of the breasts there is nothing left but skin condensed flat against and indented between the ribs. In fact, if not for the hair and the size and shape of the hips, had he not seen the body clothed (and that clothing had hung loose in the secret room) as he looks now he cannot say with certainty if this was a man or a woman.

In fact, he can't even say if the body had been large and heavy or extraordinarily thin in life.

When they get into the torso they'll find little left to inform them. The lungs will be, from what he recalls of Ducky's lectures, thin collapsed sacks and the heart less than a fifth its normal size and weighing only a few ounces.

x

"What caused the burns?" he asks, grateful to work with someone who can answer questions. They're like collections of dots, each one a different pattern, if pattern can even be the word to be used.

"We're not entirely sure," Palmer confesses.

"Because of the shrinkage and then stretching of the skin," Sammy puts in, "we're not even sure of the shape of whatever was used, or if there was more than one thing in different shapes."

"Thank you," he says without kindness.

"You're welcome," she assures him with a broad smile and enough kindness for them both.

He has a policy of not head slapping anyone not on his own team but considers bringing the girl on board for two seconds.

Palmer occasionally cuts in on his conversations with Ducky but he at least has sense enough for self-preservation. He doubts Sky has as much sense, or ability to be intimidated, so he doesn't even try.

"If these marks are an inch or two, how big were they originally?"

"I'd rather not guess."

He cannot fault Palmer for that caution, such detail can direct the investigation and will depend upon the original dimensions of the body, but they know better than to leave him with as little as they are. "What does Ducky say?"

"Doctor Mallard is in the lounge."

Gibbs' lips form 'he's in the lounge' but he's so astonished he can't get any breath behind it.

x

"He says we're to do the initial evaluation and have a report for him when he gets back from his break."

He double checks his watch, certain he hadn't misread it. No, it's right. Eight sixteen. "So what's your report?"

"Someone tortured her to death," Sammy declares, her voice harder than he'd ever heard it. For someone who spends her life between thrilled and ecstatic, who's fluent in the language of emphatics, this is unexpected.

"What do you have to back that up?"

The question silences her, never a good alternative even if it's the one he'd hoped for. He knows this hesitation is from her weeks of working with Maura Isles of Boston while the pair had womanned Autopsy. Ducky had been on a planned vacation and the Palmers on an enforced one which, technically, they still have three more days of, so Maura Isles had been brought in to replace Ducky and Sky to replace Palmer.

Isles never committed herself to anything until it had been thoroughly examined, researched, evaluated, proven – and even then she included provisions. He's only interested in answers, and if Sky's going to apprentice here she'd better learn to give them on command.

For now, in lieu of the head slaps he doesn't give in Ducky's domain, he'll settle for a glare that usually makes other Gunnies back away.

"Well, the burns are scattered unevenly over her torso," Jimmy says, perhaps thinking to rescue her, "but due to shrinkage and stretching of the skin I can't tell you what the original shape of whatever was used on her was, elliptical, round, oval, square or what." This he can see for himself. The flesh, as it dried and molded itself around the body in ever tightening constriction, was distorted by unyielding ribs, and the small marks are not smooth but consist of collections of dots which literally shrank together over the years.

He's reminded of Charles Bright, found in Puller High School at Quantico after being trapped in a chimney, so smoked that stab wounds resembled pin pricks visible only with two magnifiers.

"How many burns are there?"

"Including those on her feet and right hand," he says, "forty three."

"The burns follow no pattern," Sky says, "which is why I think she was tortured, but not sexually."

"Why not?" He knows but won't discuss why she'd be familiar with this, not in front of Palmer. He'd given her his word, but she'd been a valuable source of insight on this issue on a previous case.

"The pattern doesn't focus on the common spots for sexual torture; the breasts, bum and genitals. In fact, there doesn't seem to be a focus at all."


	5. NIS Redux

Chapter Five  
NIS Redux

In the first hour of Alpha shift only one person uses the Employee Lounge. Gibbs glances down at the book open on the table before his friend before taking the seat opposite him.

"Ah, Jethro," the venerable man greets him as he closes the volume, "I thought I would see you soon."

He doesn't glance at his watch. It's only after 0830, but they've been on duty overnight, so he can forgive the break. He wishes he were in a position to take one of his own. "Can't all work around the clock," he says, conveying the impression that he would if he could.

"There is an old Iroquois story that when a young man comes of age he is taken into the woods at dusk, blindfolded and left to fend for himself. And so he sits, no fire, the sounds of the night animals, the bear, the wolf and the snake his only companions. It is a test of manhood, and he will fail if he removes the blindfolded and attempts to return to his village before dawn.

"So he sits, the night sounds evoking terrors as they approach and surround him. He undoubtedly prays to the Great Spirit for courage, though he probably feels it deserting him as the hours stretch on. He has no weapon, no help, no way even to see the dangers until they are at his throat.

"Finally, after the long fearful hours, he sees the morning sun lighten the blindfold and feels the warmth of the rising sun upon his flesh. The ordeal over, he removes his blindfold to find his father seated next to him."

Gibbs says nothing, knowing the point will be revealed in time.

x

"Abby, when I expressed to her some months ago the awareness that I have more days behind me than I do ahead, was kind enough to voice the opinion that I had just recently passed the midway mark, but in point of fact that is not true. You and I feel the breath of the next generation upon the backs of our necks and we must be sure that, when it is time to make way, your bullpen and my suite will be in the best of hands. So, though that day is still distant, we prepare our successors. Anthony has already proven he is ready to step up, and Mister Palmer is a competent Medical Examiner though he is some years away from the legal Certification he requires. What he knows must be tempered with experience, so I shall be testing him more and more often."

"And Sky is the bear, wolf and snake."

Ducky chuckles, but Gibbs can see he makes the effort not to. "No, Jethro. Last season they each graduated from Medical School as M.D.s, but Mr. Palmer does have many years of practical experience, and Miss Sky's position is temporary and occasional, yet each has to certify on paper that their skills are in place. But if she does settle upon one career rather than two, each of which have prodigious demands on time and talent, when the day comes for me to make way, to shuffle off Stage Right as it were, I prefer to know that, as you are doing, I shall leave my legacy in good hands."

xx

"Palmer and Sky think Saunders was tortured to death," Gibbs announces to his team as he strides into the bullpen. "They also found a broken arm and broken rib, both healed."

"Palmer and Sky?" DiNozzo repeats, not sure he'd heard right. Since when does Gibbs take a report from the Autopsy Gremlin and Anna-kin Skyfaller? "What does Ducky say?"

"He was on a break." Gibbs' tone warns him not to challenge; they all know what time it is.

"Well, if someone tortured her for information," DiNozzo says, "I'm not sure what kind they'd get out of her." He uses the plasma screen's remote control to bring up the image, already on his monitor, of an attractive young blonde woman in formal blue Naval jacket bearing Lieutenant's bars matched with oak leaves and acorns, she seated before a furled flag. "Annette Saunders was a twenty two year old Naval Physician Assistant working at the Sewells Point Branch Medical Clinic, Admiral Taussig Boulevard at Norfolk. She was reported AWOL twenty one years ago and her case was investigated byyyyy..." He's already seen the light of recognition ignite in his boss' eyes; the victim's name hadn't done it but her profession and posting had.

"Mike Franks and his team."

"Otherwise famously known as the 'Fed Five'," he announces, quite unnecessarily, for the rest of the modern team.

"Not famous then, DiNozzo," he counters with a glance back into the past. Those were the years before Franks retired, McLane and Betts were reassigned, he'd become an SSA and Martine Joswig and Jennifer Shepherd joined himself and Pride. As the years passed Shepherd had transferred out, Joswig and Pride became SSAs in their own rights and Pride had gone south. DiNozzo had come on just after Joswig was promoted. Since then there had been more and more changes but in those NIS days it was "More like the 'Fed Three' and two schlepping Probies."

"Don't sell yourself or SSA Pride short."

"I'm not," he says. "Annette Saunders was one of my earliest cases. She'd left Norfolk at the end of her shift, family thought she went to a second job until the next morning the father started making calls. Norfolk checked, couldn't reach her and notified NIS. We spoke to the Clinic, her other job, interviewed friends and family but the trail finally cooled, other things got hot and eventually she went into the Cold Case box. It stuck in my claw. I didn't like to lose."

"Didn't?"

"Don't. DiNozzo, she was with a Volunteer Ambulance Company back then. Hunt them down."

 _"On_ it, Boss!"

x

"She lived with her family at that place, McGregor. I was there twice but didn't recognize it." The renovation to restore it to its 18th Century grandeur had changed too much of the then modern house and he hadn't expected a connection to the ancient case. "McGee, get into NIS Archives. Pull everything on that case from that idiot savant of yours. Find the rest of the family from your namesake."

"Pulling from the idiot."

"Ziva, that house was being renovated for that grand unveiling. I want to talk to that company, find out how Sky fell into something they missed." She doesn't answer, turning her attention to her computer, probably deciding she doesn't want to try to top 'pulling from the idiot'. He heads to his desk. He'll call SSA Pride and pick his brain.

Michelle rendezvous with him mid way across, hands him the paper printout of the information on the screen, the summary of the woman's professional Naval career. "Palmer, get Warrants for all her personal records. She had a broken arm and a broken rib and I don't remember either. Find out who her doctor was and what happened."

She looks up the tower. "Yes, sir."

"And Palmer?"

"Yes, sir?"

"Welcome back." It was supposed to be Monday, the 30th of this scorching July, but three days early isn't bad.

"Thank you, sir."

"Don't call me sir."

"Yes, si– Spec– Gi– B–" She gives up, walks quickly back to her desk.

Gibbs goes to his own and she can't see his smile. Nice to have things back to normal.

xxx

Supervisory Special Agent Dwayne Cassius Pride descends the steps from his working apartment in NCIS' New Orleans Division to find his team, Special Agents Christopher LaSalle and Meredith Brody, hard at work. In the early morning the temperature already flirts with 80 and shows every sign of consummating the relationship, so work attire is usually casual even for the city that defined the word.

"What've we got on this bright and cheerful morning?"

"Not a blessed thing, King," LaSalle declares. "I'm thinking about setting up a Field Annex at Café Du Monde." Pride's phone at his belt rings. "Then again…."

Dwayne pulls the device free and works to force the smile down. "Pride."

/Gibbs./

Perhaps the one living man who remembers Mike Franks' lessons in brevity. "Hello, my brother."

/Need to pick your brain. You remember a Navy Lieutenant who supposedly went AWOL in our Probie days, twenty one years ago, Physician Assistant Annette Saunders?/

"Like it was yesterday." He no longer has to contain the wry smile. "But I'm sure you'll remind me of the few things that might've slipped my mind."

While Gibbs brings back the ancient case and updates him on the latest, Pride exchanges a series of rapid hand signals with his team so that, at the end, he feels confident to say "Things are slow here. Want a hand?" He would love to warm up this Cold Case and put it away.

/Never turned you down yet, my brother./

"We'll see you later today." He presses the disconnect. "Gear up for DC, but don't pack too lightly, it only hovers around 95 up north."

xxx

The call to the Contractor company yielded nothing. Most of the work had been done to the weathered outside of the building and that to the interior had been confined to the rooms which, over the decades, had seen the most use. No one had looked closely at the hall walls to spot a seam obscured by shadows, not when the individual rooms had been the focus of attention. Artists had brought out color on the hall paintings that had lost their vibrancy since the 1800's, but beyond that nothing had been done there.

McGee makes his report from his desk. "Of the four family members noted in the NIS report, Mrs. Nora Saunders, mother of Robert Saunders and Mother-in-Law to Elizabeth, died at 81 of a heart attack five months after Lieutenant Saunders went UA - I mean AWOL. Elizabeth Saunders died in a boating accident eight years ago and Robert died of cancer three years ago. The house was left to Annette's brother Paul. He was nine years old when Annette went missing, now thirty."

The details are coming back. "What about him?"

"His company is a Canon affiliate and appears focused on product research and development. According to the corporate prospectus, being affiliated but outside the Canon conglomerate allows for 'cutting edge and rewarding development'. He's had no run-ins with the law. Seems to have led a quiet life, at least so far as the LEOs are concerned."

"That's the problem with this case," DiNozzo says. "Two decades plus, most everyone connected with it will either be quiet or dead."

xx

It's after each of them have individually broken for lunch and the last agent returned to the searches for clues that the proverbial cavalry arrives, heralded by the ring of the elevator bell. "Anyone here call for pizza?" is how Supervisory Special Agent Pride announces himself and the man and woman who flank him as they enter the enclave.

"All the way from New Orleans," DiNozzo quips, "I hope it's pineapple."

The odd choice earns him disbelieving looks from both teams as Gibbs comes out to exchange a hug and greeting with one of his oldest friends in NCIS. That Gibbs is not known as a hugger, except with Abby who is a hugger of everyone, emphasizes the unique caliber of this relationship.

It's an example of truly cosmic coincidence that said Forensic Scientist hurriedly enters from around Michelle's desk as introductions among the eight agents are winding down.

"Gibbs, I have some good ne–" The three Louisiana agents turn to her. "Oh my _God_! _Dwayne_!" She does an impressive imitation of a Starship going into warp.

Dwayne Cassius Pride braces for the collision and only their encircling arms prevent them from bouncing apart. Abby Sciuto is a world renowned hugger but this is an epic encounter. She pulls back only a second before respiration can become an issue. "How _are_ you?"

Hand to his chest, the taller man confesses "Several ribs fractured but I'll live."

"Take more than a collision with a beautiful woman to put you out of action, King," Chris LaSalle quips.

"I had no idea you were coming how are you it's so great to see you how's Laurel how's Loretta how's Sebastian how's Patton when did you get in what's going on in Nu Aulins what've you been doing how come you don't cal–?"

x

"Hold on," he urges behind raised hands. "You're at 'Caf-Pow!' 78 and I'm still spinning at 33."

"You and Gibbs are still a pair," she quips with a glance to her silver Zorro. "Neither of you ever left the Dark Ages of the 60's."

"CDs just aren't the same. Most times you can't even see them, which is why I wonder why they bother to put pictures on them."

Abby hugs Chris and only then does she focus on the black haired woman in their midst. "Oh. Hi."

"Abby Sciuto," Pride says. "Meredith Brody. She joined the team a few months ago." To Brody he introduces the scientist with "You recall Abby's the Sebastian of Headquarters Division."

"Of course. Hi."

Abby hugs the woman, but when they can't see each other's faces for the moment she thinks Samantha Sky is the only one she'd known until now who could look good with that really short haircut. When they pull back she says "I'm sorry about that earlier. I kind of know Dwayne... well, for a while."

"Abby's a home town girl."

"I lived in Esplanade Ridge."

"Abs," Gibbs presses before this can turn into something far removed from work.

"Huh?"

"You said you had some good news."

"Oh. _Yes._ I have _great_ news."

"What is it?"

"Dwayne's up for a surprise visit."

Gibbs starts a slow count but Pride gives him a wry look. "She hasn't changed a bit."

"I don't believe in change," she declares. "I am the one Universal Constant. In the universe. That's constant."

" _Ab_ by."

"I finished the analysis of Annette Saunders' socks."

x

Gibbs reminds the southern Agents that, when found, the woman had been wearing her Summer White uniform but her jacket had been found on the floor beside her, under the layer of dust, her sleeve draped over her leg and her shoes had been at the right wall, one midway along it, the other near the back corner.

"Like they were thrown?" LaSalle speculates.

Gibbs only nods. He'd had the same thought, but won't call it a conclusion yet. In a case this young, if this one can be called young, nothing is definite.

"What did you find?" he asks Abby.

"The soles of her socks were slightly singed, not so you could see them on her feet but under the microscope the threads show definite signs. The material's not burnt, however."

"Consistent with Palmer's theory–"

"And Sammy's."

"Yes. That she was tortured with electricity."

"Like a cattle prod?" Tony asks broadly, looking to McGee at his desk.

"Please, Tony, I still have some scars."

Abby whirls on him. "Why didn't you _tell_ me?" she demands. "Why didn't Siobhan tell me? I have all sorts of solutions for scars."

"It's not important. They're small, only when the end was used. They'll go away."

" _Months_ , McGee. You've had them since last _year_! When this is over you, me, my Lab, shirt _off_."

"Better not let Siobhan hear that," Tony quips.

" _She's_ getting a head slap next time I see her!"

Both men are too surprised by this declaration to respond, but Gibbs isn't. "Abby."

She whirls back to him. " _WHAT!_ "

x

Tony almost ruptures his stomach muscles holding the laugh in, but Abby wisely turns the intensity down some fifty notches.

"The socks," he says levelly, a dangerous control. "Electricity?"

"Definitely possible. I give it a 93%. Maybe they were wet so they didn't burn, but they'd have provided the contact for the current. If she was standing up when what was done to her... was done..." they can tell she hates the phrasing, "the charge would go in her torso, down her legs and out through her feet. _Narsty_ way to die."

"What would it take to kill her?"

"Household 120 for a long time, HV for shorter, same result. Jimmy and Sammy say they found 43 burns. The result's the same no matter what the voltage. If they, whoever they were, used something on her torso, I can picture a split frayed wire running household current and her wet socks in my more dispirited moments, they could shock her plenty of times. That would account for the burns but not kill her if it was done briefly. But maybe they overdid it."

"Like you said, Abby," Michelle says with a shudder, "narsty way to die."

"What about the dust?"

"Yes," Abby says, "the dust on the floor and her body were the same depth, measured in micros. Nothing under her body, jacket, shoes. Sadly, while it shows that everything settled from the same time the wall was last opened, it means no footprints or anything else."

"Someone knew the room was there," Gibbs concludes. "The family?"

"I'll check my Ouija Board," Abby promises, hurrying away before Gibbs can present his opinion. It's that in this case such a tool may become necessary if, going by the NIS files, they're to get answers from the few remaining potential sources.


	6. Recap for the Road

Chapter Six  
Recap for the Road

"Our chief suspect back then," Pride tells his team, knowing he's also bringing Gibbs' up to date on aspects of the distant past, "was the boyfriend, a then twenty five year old ex-jock by the name of..."

"Jerome Devlin," DiNozzo supplies.

"With a bad attitude and a short temper. But though the case never went beyond trying to track her movements and we later called for information from the public, describing her as a Missing Person. There was no evidence of foul play or anything else. The case went cold after about four months but we did a full workup on Devlin. We went over him, his car, his apartment house from basement to roof, never found anything. We found his prints at her house, the McGregor Mansion, particularly in her bedroom; her prints everywhere in the apartment he lived in with his family, in his room; her hair... other things," he finishes discreetly with a pan of Meredith, Michelle and Ziva.

"I'm married," Michelle says.

"I never was a Shrinking Violet," Meredith reminds her boss.

"I could curl your hairs," Ziva assures him.

"But though it was clear," he continues smoothly, "that they were having a relationship we never found anything, not even family or neighbor testimony, that said there was anything wrong."

"There was no blood," Gibbs says, the open file on the desk before him, "nothing to show anything had happened to her. His alibi held up. The last person to see her on base, the Sentry at the gate, let her out at 1814 and she was missed after 0800 the next morning. Devlin was confirmed by several witnesses to be in the apartment with his family during that night."

"Since it was Game Night at Casa Devlin," Pride resumes the narrative, "the witnesses included relatives from the mother's side of the family. Saunders' family came home after midnight but Annette wasn't there and Paul was unattended - he was nine – and the staff didn't live on site. That didn't raise any red flags because she worked with a Volunteer Ambulance Service. But in the morning her father called and she had never gone in for an 1800 to 0600 shift."

"We checked out her family, him, his family," Gibbs says. "Nothing."

x

"Devlin's now married," DiNozzo says as he brings up on the plasma screen the Virginia Driver's License of a thin and mustached face, "for six years to the former Debbie Reynolds. No relation. No children." There's something of cruelty in the eyes. Gibbs recalls having not been at all impressed by the man two decades ago when he was brown and young, and if personality can be engraved into the features then this is a bad man.

"It was definitely a May/December wedding," Tony opines. "Debbie would have been in kindergarten when Saunders disappeared."

"Any Record?"

"I'm sure you mean since the Fed Five looked into them and that's a definite 'yes'. Arrests include one for ADW four years ago, three for Possession, the first two were fifteen and seven years back. The most recent Possession was eight months ago; he plead out and received a month. The ADW charge netted him six months.

"There have been some Complaints by neighbors of disturbances but no arrests made on any of them, nothing substantiated. The only thing impressive about him is a slew of traffic tickets; his vehicle has been booted sixteen times. I have to check to see if that's a DC record, I happen to know it's not a New York one. A few other Misdemeanor Charges thrown into the mix, but it's the ADW four years back that's the most dramatic."

"Why?"

"It was against the local Scout Master. McWebelos, you'll be interested in this."

"Why?" Tim echoes.

"A rumor went around that the local Scout Master over at Our Lady of Pompeii was gay. The BSA takes a dim view of that, as I'm sure you know. The Scout Master tried to call an Open Meeting of parents to address the issue. Turned out that was a very bad idea, Security was a wash since Devlin, with no kids, shouldn't have even gotten in the door. A fight broke out, went to six parents pretty much mopping the floor with the guy before other Scout reps broke it up. Devlin used the opportunity to whack him over the head with a Coke bottle. On reflection, they should have served plastic."

x

McGee gives him a look as though to say 'And I should be interested why?' "I remember hearing about that. And he wasn't."

Gibbs doesn't care. He glances to his old partner. "Let's see if twenty years have improved his memory." Gibbs knows this won't be so. More likely he'll have forgotten his alibi, which can be far more useful to the Investigators. "What's he doing now?" he asks DiNozzo.

"He's an Assistant Manager at the Food Court in the Braddock Mall."

Some places come back like bad pennies. That's where, several years ago, Lt. Cmdr. Amanda Wilkinson had been kidnapped and locked into a car trunk by Ross Logan, head of 'Perverts Brought to Justice'. "Anything on that Volunteer Ambulance? Aventine, wasn't it?" There hadn't been much back then, because she hadn't been scheduled to work for several days before.

"Nada," Tony declares. "Whole new crew." Twenty one years is too long.

"Track them down."

"Rabbit out of the hat. On it, boss."

"Go down there," he directs. "Take Ziva and LaSalle. Brody, you're with McGee and Palmer. Take Sewells Point."

Sewells Point is in Norfolk Navy Base. McGee looks to the window. True it doesn't get dark until around nine at night, but "Boss, that's two hundred miles away."

"So?"

By Gibbs' driving, it's only a little over two hours, but by the posted limit it's more than three each way. The look he exchanges with Michelle is one of 'might as well give up'. Brody may not know yet what she's getting into unless she's made the Washington – Norfolk run, but she's about to find out.

x

"Rule 3." Michelle says only loudly enough for her associates to hear as she, McGee and Brody turn corner from the bullpen and start down the short hall.

"Don't believe what you're told, double check?" Tim asks. That does cover this phase of the Investigation, at least in a sense.

 _"My_ Rule 3," she clarifies as they reach the elevator. "When it looks like you'll have an easy day, pack a toothbrush. But maybe we'll get lucky and avoid a traffic light."

McGee gives a heavy sigh. "Forgot my phone. Be right back."

Left alone with Michelle, Meredith gives her a confidential smile. "This your first?"

Michelle's confused by the thought she sees in the taller woman's eyes. "First what?"

"You're glowing."

Her heart turns over. Brody's certainty is too certain, but there's one likely explanation. "Are you a Witch?" she whispers in broad apprehension. Only a fellow psychic should be able to–

"A what-ch?"

"A _Witch_!"

Momentary confusion is wiped away by a glance down at the previously unnoted silver five pointed star enclosed within a circle, the whole uncommonly enclosing a cross, all suspended by a thin silver chain to rest before Michelle's breasts. "No, hon," she assures her. "I'm sorry but it's all over your face. You have that 'new mother glow' and–."

"Shhhhhh - shhhhhhh - shhhhhh! Be _quiet_!" she whispers. "No one knows!"

"Knows what?" McGee's voice behind her makes her jump and she whirls while forcing her expression to innocence.

"I'm a Lesbian, and Sammy Sky and I are moving in together. Abby can have Jimmy."

Tim's face freezes and it takes several seconds to force anything through as Meredith presses the elevator button. "Ohhhhh..." the bell above their heads rings, "kayyyy."

xxx

Gibbs and Pride, in Gibbs' yellow and black Hemi, arrive in Friendship Heights at the home of Debbie and Jerome Devlin, but the lights in the suburban two story are off and the half and full curtains are drawn. The early afternoon sun shines on the front of the light green building, being quite some time before it will move to the back. Leaving the car, Gibbs wishes he could dispense with the regulation black cap as the 99 degree day threatens again to cross that last painful line. They walk along the flagstone path past the well maintained lawn, their manners projecting casual images neither feels. Though always alert for danger, this is a fact-finding mission to the Person of Interest against whom nothing had been identified twenty one years ago.

Pride knocks on the door and, a few moments later a woman's contralto voice calls through the wood "Who is it?"

"Federal Agents, NCIS," he tells her, but it's more than ten seconds before the lock clicks off. The chain only allows the door to open a six inch space, letting them see a portion of a young Caucasian face.

x

The former Debbie Reynolds, according to the records DiNozzo had pulled, is closing on twenty five and stands an inch shorter than Abby without the towering boots. Her complexion speaks of spending much of the summer in the sunlight; short brown hair frames her face but the suspicion in her brown eyes screams at them. "What do you want?"

"Is your husband home?"

"He works. What do you want?"

They identify themselves again. "We need to speak to your husband about a Naval Officer–"

"I don't know anything about that. Please go away." She shuts the door and gives the lock a sharp snap.

Pride looks to his old partner. "Well, that went like I expected. She's going to call him, let him know we're interested."

"I hope so, especially since she wouldn't let us tell her anything. Make him start out a little nervous. I want to talk to him while he knows something's up but before he has too much time to prepare."

x

As they walk back along the flagstones a man and woman, each in their early thirties, await them at the curb. "Are you men Police Officers?" the woman asks. "Detectives?"

"Federal Agents," Pride replies. Since they're wearing the regulation white on black caps, it's a curious misunderstanding.

"Naval Criminal Investigative Service," Gibbs clarifies the initials. They display their shields and IDs.

"Are you here to do something about Debbie?" Gibbs gives her his 'tell me more' expression. "We've called the Police a dozen of times. It never does any good."

"Who are you?"

"Oh," the man says, "sorry. I'm Derek Willis, this is Mindy. We live over there." He points left toward a similar house to the Devlin home, this one done in pine green with white trim, on the other side of a driveway. The walls are no more than twenty five feet apart.

"Why do you call the Police?" Pride asks.

"Because he beats the hell out of her," Mindy declares, outrage kindled and building to what they expect will be a hearty blaze. "Two, three times a week we hear the most horrible screaming." From their angle on the sidewalk the agents can see two windows on the pine green house face the light green one (Homeowners Commission at work?), and it's likely from the similarity of the houses that two also face back. "We call, the Police come, a few minutes later they walk out, get in their car and ride away. A dozen or more times and they don't arrest him."

"We used to let it go, not say anything, but things got so bad we started calling," Derek says.

"Fat lot of good it does."

"Do you get Incident Report numbers?" Gibbs asks.

"Yeah," Derek confirms. "We follow up, the answer's always the same. 'Unfounded'."

The agents don't need much more, though they're certain they'll get it. If the woman doesn't press charges, whatever ones might apply, there is nothing the uniformed LEOs can do. They can advise, offer directions to Services, but beyond that their hands are tied.

x

"I don't know him," Mindy says, "barely know her. She's nice, can't be half his age. Looks about twenty, twenty five tops." The agents consider this notable, since Devlin had been 25 when he'd dated Saunders 21 years ago and she had been 22 when she'd disappeared. DiNozzo had already characterized this current relationship as a May / December one, for the former Debbie Reynolds is approaching 25. She'd been less than 4 when things had gone wrong for Saunders.

"Really beautiful brunette," Derek continues, "kind of looks like the woman from that 92021 show, you know, after she got done with that School kid show. Anyway, there was a Block Party about three weeks ago; she was there, he wasn't. Anyway, she was wearing this loose dress, so when she bent down naturally I looked, you know? Her tits were all covered with bruises, like he used them for punching bags, you know?"

"We stopped the cops once," Mindy says, her color high, "but they said there was nothing they could do. She won't complain about him. Can we complain?"

"You could file for 'Disturbing the Peace'," Pride tells her, "but if she's not going to press Charges against him there's little you can do on the assaults. The Police can watch closely, but without a Complainant..."

"Figures. Well, _tha_ nks _any_ way," she finishes with no kindness and stalks back to her house. Derek, left behind, shrugs and follows.

Rather than being put out by the abortive interview with the wife and not finding Devlin at home, this conversation has led to a wealth of detail, and an aspect they hadn't had any evidence on so long ago. "Let's see how things are at work," Pride suggests.

xxx

The trip to Norfolk is 200 miles, over three hours at the posted speed, but while Tim must concentrate on driving the women at his right and behind him are under no such constraint.

 _"Really_?" Meredith Brody exclaims from the back seat over the struggling air conditioning, inspired admiration in her tone at Michelle's revelation, and he sets up for a little ego boost. "I have all three, though I bought the third based on the author name before finding out it wasn't an NCIS novel, but I never realized the connection. How did 'Thom E. Gemcity' come about?"

He smiles. "It's an anagram of Timothy McGee. My publisher's sense of humor."

"Everyone's in the books," Michelle says. "I'm Shelly Jalmer - I don't know who I was before I got married," she says with a bating look to Tim but he doesn't answer, "and Una Eilidh Nimah, the Queen's Handmaiden and girlfriend - then girlfriend - of Aylfryd Cuidightheach Ceallair – and if you don't think that took _practice..."_

"I can imagine."

"He's working on his fourth book, and it's about–"

"Michelle." Not time for this.

"No, it's not about me," she assures the woman, ignoring Tim's tone. "It's about Samantha Sky. Oops, I mean 'Sabrina Shore'."

 _"Michelle._ "

"Samantha Sky. Where have I heard that name before?"

"She's Ducky's new Medical Examiner-Apprentice. Part time, when Jimmy's off."

"Oh."

"She and Jimmy do Autopsies together. And if I catch her being naughty with him she's going to _need_ an Autopsy."

"I don't think you have anything to worry about."

"In his new book–"

" _Michelle._ "

"He took it from a real life case. Sammy was accused of murder, so a few name changes and situations–"

" _MichELLE_!"

"And a whole _lot_ of kinky sex."

"All right, that's enough. You _know_ I don't like information spread around before the publishing."

"Come on, Tim, who's she gonna tell?"

"The only thing I'd tell Dwayne and Chris is that you're writing a new book with a lot of kinky sex."

"There's not that _much_ of it. Besides, it's not my idea, it's my Publisher's. She insists sex sells."

"It does. What part are you up to?"

"The _really_ kinky sex," Michelle quips.

x

He gives up, knowing there's no hope. Revelations about future books was the price exacted for writing them with Tibbs, Tommy, Lisa and the others preserved. The others haven't read the work in progress, 'Spoiler-Alert Palmer' has only seen a bit of it because he needed some technical information on her Wiccan stuff and he regrets that lapse now, but he supposes he's going to have to show Sammy the first draft if only to be fair. She'd lived the case he's dramatizing.

Only Shav withholds her permission, having appeared only in Cearbhall's Quest before she forbade him from using a modified version of her as McGregor's wife, but the others all have final approval before he can publish. "The Arraignment scene," he admits with a glance at his watch.

Five more hours in this car.


	7. Aventine Inquiry

Chapter Seven  
Aventine Inquiry

Tony, driving the black NCIS-issue Dodge Stratus and regretting it's not his prized Cadillac CTS, parks the utterly indistinct cookie cutter on the street off line from the short driveway. The low blue with white topped structure's most prominent feature is a garage that takes up 2/3 of the building. A white ambulance centers the bay and four white shirted men and women labor on various parts of it.

The three agents approach at an angle that allows them to see the side of the large vehicle while keeping the four EMTs in view. The gold, white and red emblem on the truck matches the patches at the upper arms of the white shirts, a curve sided shield with white field, the upper portion of the curved top is a gold band in which 'Aventine' is printed in red, and the white field bears a red Caduceus, while within the left and right white curves of the shield are the red words 'Ambulance' and 'Service'.

DiNozzo leads Ziva and Chris LaSalle to the bay, bypassing the door at their left. With the thermometer threatening to skip 100 he wonders at the prospect of getting some cold packs. Friday afternoon heat waves should be made illegal in this city. They legislate everything else.

"Excuse me," he says to attract the attentions of the four. "Sorry to interrupt."

"Coming in on Tune-up day isn't an interruption," the tall Lieutenant says, wiping his hand and then forehead on a cloth, "it's a relief." The breeze, such as it is, blows laterally across the front of the building and as soon as the agents step inside they feel the loss of relief. "What can we do for you?"

LaSalle sees that the brunette in the rear of the ambulance seems to have some ideas as she quietly appraises him, but he keeps his focus. He's only up north for a visit. "We're looking for information on one of your former employees."

"Oh, we have no Employees here. This is a Volunteer service."

"Still, she was with you twenty one years ago."

"Wow. Predates me." He doesn't even glance at the other three. "Captain may know. He's in his office."

"Captain's right here," a voice comes from the right side door and they look to the tall, thin man who steps down the single step from the office and approaches. The man's short black hair tends to gray at the temples while the two receding areas over his eyes define a widow's peak, but much of his physique makes Tony put him at 70 approaching 62.

"Captain?" He makes the introductions of his team, who display their credentials.

"Good to meet you. The name's Gage. John Gage."

x

"Captain, we'd like to speak to you about one of your former members."

"He in trouble?"

"She. Is there some place we can talk?"

"Right this way."

The office on their right is faux wood paneled and its most prominent features, beyond the foot high replica of their shield, are the dozens of Certificates and Awards for the Aventine Ambulance Service which fill the walls. A glance at several of them is enough to show that this organization, more than thirty years old, is the beneficiary of a grateful community and such recognition is displayed with well warranted pride. In the corner to their left is a rectangles filled white board on an easel, days across the top, many names comprising the left column and a complex of assignments marked.

There are two chairs before the desk but Gage steps out, turns right to another room toward the rear and returns with a third chair which he places between the other two, this a well padded one that he offers to Ziva. He then steps around his desk to face the seated trio.

"So, what can I do for you?"

"We're looking into an incident involving one of your former members, Annette Saunders."

Gage looks back into the past. "Saunders... Saunders... Sorry, I–."

"She went missing twenty one years ago."

"Twenty one years? I know things get backlogged, but this has to be a record. Well, that predates me, I'm here for four. Twenty one years ago..." again that backward look, "I was Chief of Battalion 14, LA Fire Department."

"Retired?" It isn't much of a question.

Gage grins. "I was, but it's too much work doing nothing so I gave it up. But these days I leave the Rescues to the kids; I just hold the reins and teach."

"How many people do you have?"

"We have a crew of thirty two, but since we're a volunteer organization most of us, other than me, do this one or two days per week, usually three to four of us on twelve hour shifts. Most of our income comes from the Community and Grants," with a wave of his hand he indicates the framed certificates behind him and to each side as he stands up, "so everything goes to equipment and supplies.

"We get a pittance," he says, stepping to their left and opening a file cabinet in the corner, "but it's way less than minimum wage. We're mostly Paramedics, which is what I started as over forty years ago in LA, and we have a few Nurses and EMTs. I collect a good pension from the Department, and the others get a small stipend – very small, unfortunately – but we make up a lot in taxes for Volunteering. Here it is. Annette Saunders."

He brings a folder back to the desk and opens it. Whatever pleasure had been in his face fades as he reads the words presented. "This says she was with us for seven years, from twenty eight ago, and that one day she was just gone. Police, Naval Investigative Service," he looks up, "I presume that's you."

"Our old name. In fact, two of our bosses were on that original team."

"So now they hold the reins and teach?"

"Not exactly."

x

"Your agents interviewed my predecessor, that's two back by the way, but there's no final record. They thought she went AWOL, came here three times... nothing since." He looks the question.

"She was a Missing Person," Tony tells him. "She's been found."

"Dead."

It's not much of a stretch. Were she alive, they would not be here asking questions. "Yeah."

"I'm sorry." He closes the file. "What can we do? I imagine you – or rather those NIS Agents – have a lot more detail than I do."

"We were hoping to track down some of the people who worked with your group back then."

"To ask what the others didn't back then?" He shrugs. "This place has a small turnaround for the number of people we do have. Some people might stay on for ten, even fifteen years, but over twenty? No. Even those with us then, our contact information only applied to when they were on, and I figure you probably have that already. After they leave for one reason or another, we don't keep those records."

"Can we get a record of those who were on _before_ those days?" It's a stretch that a former member might know anything, or have done anything, but he'll take what he can get. McGee can do his magic with the rest from the Archived files.

Gage considers. "I'd like to help. I really would. But I'd feel more comfortable if you had a Warrant. You bring me one and I'll give you Carte Blanche to all our records, for what good they might do."

xxx

Gibbs and Pride step up to the Receptionist in the basement Management Office of the Braddock Mall. The Mall itself is a sprawling complex consisting of more stores than any customer needs and anything not devoted to consumerism is tucked out of sight below ground. Everything from Receiving and Delivery to Storage for dozens of shops crowds the lower levels and Management is tucked between the Porters' Locker Room and Security, itself a seemingly insufficient amount of space for the numbers of people needed to protect this monument to rampant commercialism.

The last time Gibbs had been here his focus had been on the roof, first to rescue Lt. Cmdr. Amanda Wilkinson from suffocation in Ross Logan's car trunk where he had imprisoned her in a misguided attempt to 'teach her a lesson' in business practices; then to arrest Logan. He considers that this visit is not going to be as worthwhile.

"May I help you gentlemen?" the small and somewhat parched woman inquires. They display their credentials and Gibbs tells her that "We're here to speak to Jerome Devlin, your Food Court Assistant Manager."

Fortuitously, the door behind her opens and a gentleman steps out.

"Oh, Mr. Burns? These two Agents, NCIS," she specifies though they expect the man can read their regulation caps, "would like to speak to Mr. Devlin."

"May I ask what this is in reference to?" he asks Gibbs.

"No."

x

He's always wanted to do this and the current situation is an excellent opportunity. He and Pride have decided this time to use Franks' Method Five, also known as 'Good Cop, Bad Cop'. In this instance so he feels no need to wait to begin his role.

"Now Gibbs, more flies with honey than vinegar."

"I don't like flies."

Pride makes a subtle show of ignoring his irascible partner. "We'd like to speak to Mr. Devlin, who was a Material Witness in a case a little while ago. There have been some developments since we interviewed him and we'd like to see what additional information he may have. Is there some place we may meet with him?"

Burns considers very briefly. "This is somewhat short notice, gentlemen." He checks his watch, an unnecessary gesture. "It's gearing up for the dinner hour and Fridays are our busiest. Things are very busy upstairs."

"It won't take long."

He evidently gives up, knows he won't change a thing. "All right. I'm on my way upstairs. I'll take you to him and you can meet in his office."

"That will be fine."

xx

The Food Court is on the fourth floor - in fact it is the fourth floor, and consists of thirty three fast food choices from Arby's through Tong Wey Chinese that line the walls and surround several hundred table and four chair sets. Enough of those tables are occupied with early diners to satisfy the various crews that surround the room, but the agents know there is no such thing as satisfaction where sales are concerned.

Nonetheless, they're glad of the escort and follow him down a short corridor between a KFC and a Dairy Queen and through a set of doors into a shorter corridor with three doors on each side. Burns goes to the second door on their left and raps on it before opening it, not waiting for an answer.

"Jerry, some people to see you," he says by way of introduction.

The office is small and crowded, testimony to the priorities of the Mall. The desk and chair are immediately opposite the door. Cabinets, a computer on the desk and printer against the right wall opposite a Xerox machine, some varied accessories complete the inventory other than two uncomfortable looking white plastic chairs. Burns makes himself scarce immediately.

Devlin, seated before them, is tall and thin, graying with a hard expression and, to judge by that expression, doesn't seem to expect company. The years have not been kind to the man they'd interviewed several times two decades ago. "What can I do for you gentlemen?"

"Do you remember a woman by the name of Annette Saunders?" Pride asks.

"Annnnn... Wow, that's a blast from the past. Yeah. We dated, what, had to be something like twenty years ago. She disappeared one day. Went away, I thought, but never came back. Police questioned everyone in town. Navy agents too. She was in the Navy."

"They questioned you," Gibbs pushes. He remembers the then 25 year old but doubts he recognizes them. He won't push on that. Whether Devlin does or does not may mean quite a bit.

"I was in town."

"You ever hear anything about her after that?" Pride asks.

"No, but I have a feeling I'm going to. What is this?"

"She turned up yesterday."

Mild surprise, no fear - yet. "Where was she?"

"Walled up in her home," Gibbs says. He's a devotee of the 'sledgehammer between the eyes' method, but Devlin gives them surprise.

"No shit."

"And you're the last one to have seen her."

x

He thinks about this for a few moments. "That's not how I remember it. I remember not even seeing her the day she disappeared. When your partners from the Navy asked me, it'd been a few days."

"You got your dates wrong," Pride counters, quite content to have the man refer to Gibbs and himself in the third person. "According to the records, you met her at work and gave her a ride home."

This stops Devlin and he thinks again, longer. "No, that's not right. No, I hadn't seen her. What the hell is this? You trying to frame me for something?"

"You've had a couple of run ins with the law in the past few years," Gibbs reminds him. "ADW, Possession, Vehicular Violations." He won't mention the Domestic Abuse suspicion right now. Since Devlin's neighbors had made complaints that the wife didn't uphold and no evidence was available, no police action had been taken beyond logging the Complaints and determining them to be 'Unfounded'.

"Minor stuff. Well, the ADW wasn't minor, I'll give you, but I paid my time. I have nothing to do with what happened to Annette. I don't even know what happened to her."

"We paid a visit to your home to look for you, spoke to your wife."

It's interesting how quickly someone can go from fair faced to red. "You had no right to do that! Leave her out of this!"

"She was surprised to hear that Saunders was dead."

"Of course we're surprised! Neither of us had anything to do with that!"

Of that Gibbs has no doubt, at least as far as the wife. The woman had been four years old when Saunders went missing. "You have a bit of a temper, Jerry," he observes.

"What's that got to do with anything?"

"Before Annette Saunders was walled up in her home, someone worked her over pretty well." This isn't true, but Gibbs doesn't mind a little misdirection if it can shake loose truth.

"That has nothing to do with me. I didn't do a thing to her!"

"She was tortured, for a long time. Our M.E. is still counting the wounds."

"What does that have to do with me? Nothing!"

Pride shakes his head "There are complaints from your neighbors against you with Metro. Domestic abuse, I understand. What would we find if we subpoenaed your wife's medical records?"

Devlin is on his feet. "GET OUT!" I didn't do anything! You think otherwise, you damn well PROVE it but do it from out _there_! GET OUT before I call Security and have you THROWN out!"

xx

Gibbs and Pride leave Braddock Mall, feeling quite satisfied. Truly they have nothing to hold Devlin on; he has only one actual charge involving violence in his history and he did pay for that offense; but if this encounter undermines him, Jerry Devlin may well make a mistake – and they'll be watching.

Having received a report from McGee, Palmer and Brody on the voice mail of his till now turned off cell phone that they had learned less at the Norfolk 'Sewells Point Branch Medical Clinic' than Tony and his team had at the Aventine Ambulance Service, Gibbs returns the call to direct the agents to return, that they're done for the day. Of course, in today's traffic, they'll reach DC in about three hours.

"What did you get, McGee?"

/No joy, boss. Sewells Point started the AWOL Process after she was unaccounted for and notified NIS. There's a DA-4187, DD 553, 458, the whole works. She was never located. Only two people from those days are still on staff, they say they remember nothing./

"Keep looking. Palmer, get some Warrants for Debbie Devlin's Medical Records from her GP and the local Hospitals as well as from her Insurance carrier. You should be able to do all this from the car; otherwise you'll be putting in some overtime."

/Sir,/ her voice comes through tinny over the speaker phone, /I'm going to run into HIPPA restraints left and right even if I could send them Ducky's Death Certificate. I'm not even sure I can get around them for Saunders' stuff./

"Then you're definitely putting in overtime."

He snaps the phone closed but ten seconds later, as they head to the Hemi, anxious to get out of the heat, Pride's phone rings. He doesn't have to check the Caller ID nor guess at the purpose. It allows him to answer with "I've booked us in 'Transient Officers' at the Navy Yard."

/Six hours on my butt, you'd better have made them good./

xxx

Debbie Devlin has paced the house for hours, alternating late evening dinner preparations with trying to watch the late News programs, anxiously awaiting some news about Jerry. He hasn't called, she dares not leave the house lest he come home – _is_ he coming home? – to find her not there.

When she hears the key turn in the lock her heart jumps. He's home. He's _safe_. Those damned Agents didn't do anything to him. When the door opens and she sees him step in her heart leaps. "Honey!" She rushes across the room but would skid on the carpet if it were possible when she sees his eyes. She's halted two feet from him, looking up into his hard eyes and tries to brazen it out. "How was your day?"

It sounds lame to her ears but nothing else will pass her lips. He shuts the door with exaggerated care and she wants to back away but her legs won't work.

"The Police came to me today," he tells her, his voice empty of all inflection. "Not the Police, Federal Agents."

"I..." She feels her blood rush to her head, her heart pounds so hard she thinks her chest must burst.

"They wanted to know about an old girlfriend." He takes a step toward her and now she can back away, but only a step to his. "She's dead." Another step, another back away on unsteady legs. "I found out they were here and talked to you."

"I di – didn't say anything." Her voice trembles despite her best efforts.

"No. You didn't." He steps closer, this time closing the distance. "You didn't even say anything to me." His hand moves faster than a striking snake. His fingers clench about her hair and he pulls her to him, the force bringing her off her feet with a sharp yelp. She must look up at him, knees bent, hands on his hips, looking up as he tilts her head. "They came to my office, and it was a big surprise."

"Darling, please..."

"But I forgive you," he says, his face close to hers, holding her still by the tight grip on her hair. "I forgive you."

"Darling–"

"In fact," he says, his face inches from hers, "I'm going to give you a present."

"What?"

xx

Across the driveway the separates the Devlin home from the Willis', Mindy is preparing for bed when a horrendous shriek fills the room, then another and another.

Her right hand flashes to her forehead, stomach and each shoulder as scream follows scream. Mindy covers her mouth as the shrieks tear at her soul.

She wants to cover her ears to shut out the shrill cacophony of agony. She looks to the phone on the night table but she doesn't go to it, knowing anything she could do is useless as the screams rise in pitch.


	8. Lion and the Lens

Chapter Eight  
Lion and the Lens

Long after 2200, when Friday's full dark has closed off the windows of her apartment, Abby is seated on her black leather couch, head back and eyes closed, listening to the dulcet notes of Sammy's violin as she practices. She's seated in the black recliner at the left wall by the window, and the remnants of the Great Wall Chinese from the corner litter the coffee table before the couch.

Despite air conditioning having overcome abusive heat, the weather's not her problem this time. She empathizes with her friend; this evening they spoke of it over dinner without finding a resolution. Coming on an old crime scene last night and the corpse she'd work on had not been her idea of a date, especially when faced with Bill's reaction to the decades old corpse. It's one thing to know your girlfriend cuts up bodies to find out what killed them, quite another to be introduced to said corpse when they were supposed to be out at a special event.

She'd heard a great deal from Sammy about the autopsy, in the faith Ducky had shown in his Assistants in leaving them to solo while he stood back and observed, not having to place more than a few work related comments. Abby is sure his non-work related commentary had been formidable, but now she needs to unwind.

When she'd found no relief or inspiration on how to put things back into sanity with her love, she'd pulled out her violin to soothe her nerves, not knowing the effect it'd had on the scientist's.

x

The doctor's musical selections are never her first choice. The fare of the Washington Renaissance Orchestra is normally Classical, while Abby's tastes run to Classic Rock on the rarest of occasions. She's normally cutting edge. Groups such as 'Brain Matter' and 'Artful Dead' and 'Zombie Psychosis', to say nothing of 'Whipped and Whapped' or 'Crawl from the Grave', get her creative juices flowing, but she enjoys Sammy's skill. The sound is usually soothing and relaxation is what she needs tonight.

Since inviting the Apprentice M.E. to move in on what had been intended to be a short interval while her friend searched for a new apartment, a search that'd gradually slowed to a mutually unnoticed halt, she's come to see the appeal of a new (old) type of music.

What Sammy's playing tonight isn't her usual fare either. It'd started with 'Only You' from 'Starlight Express' before she'd moved on to 'Love Changes Everything' from 'Aspects of Love', both Andrew Lloyd Webber hits. The man does know Love Music. Next she'd slipped into 'A Time For Us', the Love Theme from 'Romeo and Juliette', followed immediately by 'Somewhere'. Abby wonders if her friend is even aware that, since meeting a certain artist, her selection of practice music, when she's not assigned a particular work for rehearsal, is more than 90% Love Songs.

She's happy for the spritely imp, but when 'Blue Skies of Hawaii Smile on this our Wedding Day' fades and Sammy begins Mendelsson's 'Wedding March'; traditionally played as the Bride and Groom leave the ceremony, she decides it's time to rein it in.

x

But the reins are pulled by raps on wood. Sammy stops and she and Abby exchange a surprised glance. Not only doesn't percussion belong to this piece, but after 2200 neither of them expects company.

"What, can no one sleep tonight?" Abby asks.

Sammy shrugs, two quick high notes punctuating the gesture.

Abby's off the couch even as Sammy restores her instrument to its molded case. "Who's there?" she calls as she crosses the room diagonally to the corner door.

"It's me, Michelle Palmer," filters through the wood.

Abby glances back at her roommate, who shrugs and offers a grin. She opens the door. "Hey, Lion." She's taken to calling her friend that because of her mane of black hair.

"I'm sorry. I wasn't sure you'd even be up until I heard Sammy playing. That was very nice, by the way," she says past her hostess as she enters. Since Abby's barefoot - both her hostesses are in fact – the Scientist doesn't tower over her as she normally does and since she's in flats she's not that much taller than Sammy.

"Thanks."

"Brings back my Honeymoon." She and Jimmy had gone to the big island.

"Michelle."

"I'm sorry. I don't mean to bother you, but... may I speak to you for a minute?"

Abby closes the door, not wanting to throw her guest out onto the street but "You came all this way from Georgetown - without calling B.T.W. - to ask if you could 'speak for a minute'?"

Actually she'd come from the Navy Yard after Tim dropped her off at her car. Had she gone home it really would have been too late. She looks around the living room, discomfort preventing her from meeting their eyes until she finally forces herself to lock - lock - on Abby's. "I have to tell you something. I was waiting for the right time, and since it hasn't come I decided to make it." And if Meredith Brody can guess it by looking at her face, she'd better lift the veil of secrecy before there's no point in keeping it.

Sammy crosses the room to join them but says nothing.

"You mean about what happened to you on the Princess?" Abby asks. Ever since Michelle had fainted as the climax of a dramatic seizure and desperate calls to her Goddess, and then spent the rest of the cruise joined at the hip to the ship's Nurse, Abby had been worried sick and frustrated by the woman's steadfast refusals to explain anything. "The thing you've been tighter than an Aldeberan shell mouth over for a week?"

"I'm sorry about that. I had a lot to think about."

"Okay." She hadn't been mad. Anxious but not mad. Scared but not mad. Worried sick, but not mad. "I'm just glad to see you're not so down anymore. You're a lot more cheerful, in fact, ever since that night." She considers the point. "But before we go on I want to know one thing."

"What's that?"

Hands slam to her hips and she demands with faux severity "Who are you and what've you done with Michelle Palmer?"

x

She laughs. "I guess I deserve that. I've been going through quite a few changes lately."

"You? Ohh, noooooo."

"That's why I came. I wanted to tell you now."

"Where Michelle Palmer is?" Sammy quips.

"She's here," she answers, patting her chest. But then her smile morphs into a much wider grin when she pats herself very low on her abdomen. "She's just not _alone_ anymore."

Sammy shrieks first, her pitch is higher than Abby's but Michelle's is highest of all. She'd been holding it in for far too long.

xxx

Tim McGee unlocks his apartment door, his thoughts on his bed and he's not sure if he's going to stay awake long enough to get that far. He knows the boss has had this case for two decades but he doesn't want to spend a twenty year shift in solving it. But as soon as the door opens he finds the living room to his right and enclosed kitchen to his left are both dark, which doesn't bode well for a Friday late evening. Night. By his watch it's 2248 but after driving 400 miles to interview far too few people, drop off his passengers and then sojourn back north to Silver Spring, he had hoped not to walk into an empty apartment. Okay, Shav's schedule, since she's one of only two priests in a Church servicing over 900 souls, is as irregular and unpredictable as his own. He hadn't called ahead, he'd just hoped – expected – that she'd be home.

When he clears the short corridor and can see the rest of the living room stretched to his right his spirit revives with the dim light shining through the frame of the bedroom door past his writing desk.

He passes the tall shelves of his record collection, passes his typewriter desk, turns right and opens the door.

Siobhan, dressed in her pink negligee and small matching panties, lays on the sheet in the middle of their king size bed, half seated up upon three of the four pillows between both night table lamps on and with a white paperback book in her hands.

"Hoigh, a _chéadsearc_!" she exclaims, characteristic delight in her greeting.

"Hi, sweetie." She'd called him 'cayd shark', her first and only love, always flattering. "What are you reading?" He reads the colorful book cover, "'Galactic Patrol' by ee 'doc' smith, 'The Famous Lensman Series'." He recalls she'd bought the set of books at the Memorial Day Greater East Coast Comic Art Convention at the Maritz two months ago and they'd joined the volumes that already crowd her tall corner bookcase out in the living room.

"Umm _huummm._ I'm at the part where Kimball Kinnison has received his Release and everyone's cheering as he's heading for his Speedster."

x

He has no idea what she's talking about, but since she's laying as much on his side of the bed as her own, he steps around and squeezes in beside her, she on his right, and he's up high enough that he can see the page. The book is in mint condition, spine unbent.

"He's about to meet with a Shipping Magnate and the Base Commander on Radelix to outline his plan for assaulting a Pirate ship."

The fact that he can see none of that on the pages makes him ask "How many times have you read this book?"

"Hm? Oh, this is my first."

'Okay, she's playing literal.' He knows she doesn't read backwards, unlike Sarah who reads the end of a mystery to see who did the deed before she starts. Mystery books to his sister are like old episodes of 'Columbo'. "Okay, how many times have you read the story?"

She shrugs. "Fourteen," she answers vaguely. "Give or take." She catches his eye. "I've loved the Lensman series since I was a girl. Especially Worsel."

He doesn't know what a Worsel is other than perhaps a Scots game and she's in no hurry to enlighten him. He suspects half her fun is in referring to things he has absolutely no clue about. He props his head on his hand, but his eyes don't go to the book she's returned her attention to. The negligee is sheer enough to tint rather than obscure and his position is perfect.

A few moments later he reaches for her left clavicle and with one finger he lightly traces a line down from shoulder and up the rise to find and tickle a very sensitive spot.

x

"What are you doing?" she asks, her breath quickening, emerald eyes still on the book but she sounds like she's having difficulty following the narrative. Under his circling finger her nipple firms to tent the pink wisp.

"Tuning in your positronic control."

She giggles, but then tries more determinedly to read as she tells him "Positronic brains are Asimov," she breathes, "and unlike you I do not have my brain in my breast."

"My brain's not in it but it's definitely on it." He gives her nipple a gentle pinch and is happy with her quick breath and to see her shiver from hair to toes.

"I was right at the Maritz," she tells him, staring intently at the pages. He wonders if she sees them. "I married a Satyr."

"No, a satire."

She giggles again but then holds the book firmly in both hands and demonstrably locks her attention on it. Since the scene she'd mentioned having passed is on the lower right page, she's still not reaching the event she'd predicted.

She turns the page however, and he stops teasing her nipple, which quite definitely resembles a rocket ready to launch.

He reaches across her chest to tease her right nipple. "You are blocking my view."

She doesn't sound like she minds. "Do you care?"

"It's a very–" She gasps as he runs his finger very quickly back and forth across her firming nipple. "Thrilling scene," she sighs.

x

He sits up beside her and shifts his body lower until he's sitting beside her hips, her long legs before him and he reaches below the diaphanous hem, his fingertips teasing her warm inner thigh. Her breath quickens and after a few moments her legs drift slightly apart as he traces up under the edge of her garment. The tinting panties are, if anything, sheerer and don't even suggest hiding anything. Her muscles twitch under his gentle touch. The diaphanous material is already moist. He tickles her most sensitive spot.

"What are you doing now?" she asks, breathing harder, staring intently at the page but sounding quite thoroughly distracted. He tickles faster and her deep breaths answer.

"Activating your warp nacelles."

x

This time her laughter is so full the book falls off the bed and bounces quietly on the carpet. But then her laugh is split in half and she grasps his wrist and glares at him, half seated up. "Wait a second. Are you calling my legs _warped_?"

"Errr, no." Releasing him, she lays back, braces her hands on the mattress, brings her legs up fast, shifts her hips left and her legs come down before and behind him. She locks her ankles and squeezes. "Ng hrrr."

" _I'll show you warped_." A sharp right twist of her body slams his backward across the mattress. She pulls her trapped leg out and an instant later she straddles his hips and has a double fistful of his shirt. She silences him with her lips.

Tim knows nothing about Lenses or Worsels, but her engine is very definitely purring.


	9. Seen and Not Heard

Chapter Nine  
Seen and Not Heard

Gibbs enters through the rear door of the Forensics Lab at 0702 carrying a large coffee cup in one hand and a larger 'Caf-Pow!' in the other. The first thing he notices about Abby, turned in profile to him, attention fixed on Major Mass Spectrometer, is that she's wearing a black tee shirt and the bands at her throat and wrists are the black with large silver spikes set. This is her aggressive combination, the one that says she demands answers and heaven help the evidence that doesn't give them up.

Yet when she sees him coming her scowl morphs into a broad smile that he senses has little to do with the 'Caf-Pow!' in his hand. She turns to him and her black shirt has a single thin white line pressed out by her breasts. When he reaches her, he sees the line consists of tiny white letters. Attention captured, he leans a bit closer but has to squint as she smiles at him.

::If you're close enough to read this, my friend Gibbs will slap you::

He hadn't known that he'd been better off with yesterday's Devil / Angel tee. He straightens up, gives her a long suffering stare that completely fails to diminish her smile.

In fact, it broadens. "Wait'll you see what Sammy has printed on today's panties."

He never wants to know.

x

"What's with the scowl?" is what he wants her to answer first.

"What scowl? I never scowl."

"Abs, I've been working on this case for over two decades. I'm tired. What've you got?"

"Have you seen Ducky yet?"

"Always come to you first."

"That is so sweet."

"Where's Rae?"

"I asked her to see if Ducky's ready with the skeletal samples. It's fun having her here, _much_ better than Chuckles and we've made a good bit of progress on our dozen cases, but you're always on my front burner." She gives him a saucy smile he does his best to ignore. "Anyway, if you'd seen Ducky already he'd have told you that they're working their way layer by layer into Annette Saunders. Working on a mummy is a lot different from a fresh corpse, but at least it's not rotted. I don't want to steal all his thunder, but the samples Sammy brought up to me–"

"She still here?"

Abby's expression isn't her usual happy one. "Yes, Gibbs. Ducky's practicing for retirement. He's making sure they can solo as a team."

"I know," he says, ignoring the contradiction.

She doesn't mind his look; they both know there's more than the declared level to this plan. There had initially been quite a bit of tension between the two young Pathologists, mostly because Jimmy had seen Sammy as a threat to his position, so they had very rarely worked together. But they seem to have come to a good accord, making use of outside friendships such as Sammy's with Michelle.

"Anywho, the samples show some interesting things. Yesterday we thought she was tortured by electricity, this morning I'm definite. The burnt tissue from the left side of her torso definitely shows indications that the burns were electrical. Someone shocked her to death."

"What did you make of the physical evidence from the first Investigation?"

"What physical evidence?" At his look, half aggravation and half frustration, she decides to have mercy. "Everything from the NIS era is in Annapolis. I put in a Rush request yesterday. They understood when I said it was a 'Gibbs Rush'; they asked if there was any other kind." She smiles into his glare. "They say it'll be here sometime this afternoon. I'll let you know what I dig up, but don't get your hopes up; Harry Little wrote the book on this lab."

He remembers the old man fondly. "But you perfected it."

"Thank you, O Argento Zorro."

x

He won't go into this mixed Italian/Spanish reference for fear that she'll explain it and he truly doesn't want her to. "What about that broken arm and rib?"

"Well, when bones, particularly in someone in her early twenties, heal from hairline fractures, which is all these were, they take an average of five weeks. Now when a bone heals it not only rejoins at the break but forms layers of calcium – which is what bones are made of anyway – around to break to make it stronger. That's why it's extremely rare to break a bone in the exact same spot as a previous break. You're more likely to break the second time next to the calcium buildup rather than through it."

"How long ago did she have those breaks?"

"I have to get back to you on that. At this moment I don't have the bones, just the x-rays. That's what Ruby has gone for."

"So you can't tell me if Jerome Devlin did it."

"I don't even know when she broke them, or when she started dating him, so all I can give you is a definite 'maybe'." She shrugs. "Kind of."

xxx

When Jimmy Palmer steps out of the silver doored Store Room where he had changed from his street clothing – today shorts and his thinnest tee shirt – he sees Doctor Mallard and Sammy Sky over by the X-Ray panels, Ducky in his 'non-Autopsy attire' as he sometimes calls it and Sammy in white sleeveless blouse accented by a green lariat tie and miniskirt.

"Jimmy!" she exclaims the instant she sees him, crosses the room to hug him, then reaches up and grabs his ears. This is enough of a surprise as she pulls lightly to get him to bend into reach and kisses him.

It's a soft, tender kiss but when she lets him up he's so stunned she might well have punched him for as close as he is to falling. He can see Dr. Mallard by the board and the man's expression is very much like he thinks his own face looks.

"God, can you keep a _secret_." she says. "Michelle told Abby and I last night."

"I know," he says, the world righting itself.

"Well, if this is an open secret," Ducky says, "I do not know it. And if it is an impetus for this display, I think I should."

Sammy gets out of the way of the two men.

"While we were on the Pacific Princess 'Chelle got – well - that is - she insisted I not tell anyone until she did – but - that is..."

"Those two proved the nickname of that ship, the 'Love Boat', is well earned." Sammy won't reveal the mystery, but her few seconds give Jimmy what he needs to get the words right.

"'Chelle's pregnant."

"My dear boy," Ducky says as he crosses the room to them, hand extended, "that is wonderful news. Congratulations."

"Thanks. I'm sorry I couldn't say anything. 'Chelle–."

"Think nothing of it, my boy. This is a true cause for celebration." He pauses and glances about the room before deciding "This evening."

"Great."

xx

When Gibbs reaches Autopsy he sees what Abby had meant by 'practicing for retirement'. While Jimmy and Sammy work their way into the desiccated torso of Lieutenant Saunders, whose browned skin has wrapped itself around her bones. Ducky is still in his blue shirt and tartan bow tie, supervising from the comfort of his desk chair.

"Enjoying a life of leisure?" he asks as he walks past the young pair with barely a glance at the corpse between them. This is little change from yesterday afternoon and hints at a new phase in Autopsy's operations, at least until Sky goes back where she belongs.

"Immensely," his friend assures him. "Doctors Palmer and Sky are doing reasonably well with the challenge of our mummified Lieutenant. They almost make me consider them competent."

"Hey," Palmer protests.

"Yeah, right. Hey," Sammy agrees, not sounding at all slighted, for the man's jocular tone had taken all the sting from his words.

"Pipe down," Gibbs commands, not looking back to the pair.

"It is a truism," Ducky declares, "that children should be seen and not heard. Or do you perhaps have an interim report ready?"

"We do," Jimmy declares. With a look, Ducky sends the Investigator over to hear it.

x

"We think we've settled on a Cause of Death."

The pronouncement is enough to bring the older man over as well. "Indeed. What have you determined?"

"Boyfriend had a violent temper," Gibbs points out. Perhaps he's responsible for her arm and rib. They're long healed before she'd died but did he break them?

"Well, if he did anything to her it didn't come out in the External Exam," Sammy counters. "Any bruising would be masked by the mummification, but once we got inside her we were able to find something."

"I think it was a defibrillator," Jimmy says, perhaps to forestall further speculations.

Gibbs turns to the Senior ME, but he returns a look as though to say 'they're doing fine, and if they need me I'll step in'.

"That's supposed to restore rhythm to a heart," he says, trying to put things into some kind of order.

"True," Jimmy confirms. "If the natural rhythm is interrupted and the heart goes into fibrillation, as in arrhythmia or tachycardia, a defibrillator will restore it in most cases, or at least it's supposed to. It produces a momentary asystolic state, meaning it stops the heart briefly, like for a second or two. This allows the heart to resume beating in its normal rhythm."

"Right," Sammy says. "Only in television and movies do they use it to restart a stopped heart, mainly because writers, directors and actors who play doctors are idiots."

He's surprised by the iron in the usually delighted woman.

"An electrical shock has no effect on a stopped heart," she says. "That's what you use CPR or some drugs for. It's like on TV when they shock the victim and he jumps. He doesn't really, the charge isn't nearly that high or long enough to make the body convulse. That's just more television idiocy."

This surprises him even more. "What've you got against television?" Actually, for him, what there is in favor of it would be a shorter list.

"It's my favorite pet peeve. When I'm watching a hospital scene and the patient flat lines and instead of doing what they _should_ do they use a defibrillator, especially if the so-called Doctor calls for 'again' and 'again', I turn it off. I figure if they don't know something so simple, there's no point in watching it."

"No one on scripted television seems to know," Jimmy concurs.

"Plus, I have a friend in the Orchestra who never seems to know better than to debate me."

x

"But they can also kill," Jimmy says, pulling him back. "I think someone kept shocking her with bursts of electricity. If it is a defibrillator then even one or two jolts at 1,000 volts would kill her, though the heart _can_ restore its rhythm once, maybe twice if you've really lived a good life, as Mother McGee would say. Maybe whoever it was kept bringing her back with CPR; we can't know that for certain with a desiccated corpse like this without deeper examination and Abby's analysis. But I'd day these shocks were delivered over and over until she did die."

"You're saying whoever did this might not have intended to kill her?"

"I'm not saying they might or might not have, but I'm seriously thinking it."

"Yes," Sky interjects, her tone still sharp enough to draw blood. "These irregular red marks resemble the general shape of defibrillator paddles if you map all of them and look for common points. Normally the paddles are coated with a defib cream, a gel to spread the charge over a smooth area. If you don't use that, you often get burns like this from the points of charge, and if there is a burn – there isn't always – it's normally a defined shape of the paddle, rectangular or circular." Her fire fades as she gets more into channeling Ducky's pedantic style. "No cream was used on her, that's why the burns are smaller and in different shapes, like when they're used on different ribs and don't lie the same way twice. It's like reading newsprint under a microscope; what looks like letters are really shown to be blobs of ink like clouds in the sky."

Her normal tone is back. She's rarely able to maintain anything else for long, and it had come back in her dissertation. He looks down to her and she grins, but he doesn't share her pleasure in the pun.

"But if these," Jimmy picks up, waving his hand above the collection of burns, "are from a defibrillator they're all over the place. When you use a defibrillator to momentarily stop the heart you put one paddle up here," he indicates a spot below the clavicle, "and the other here," he points to a spot on the side of the body low on her ribs and nearer her back, "and the charge goes through the heart. That's not what was done to her."

"Plus, you do this only once," Sammy declares, "twice if you _really_ have to. Three times is too many. I've never seen three times - that is unless I watch television. There it seems the sky's the limit," she concludes with a sudden grin.

He'd glare the pun down if he thought it would do any good.

x

"How many times was she shocked?"

"We count forty three burns or more than twenty one sets," Jimmy says, "including her feet and right hand. Except for those three, all the others were to her torso. But we can't tell how many times she was brought back by CPR. But in the end it was too much."

Gibbs wants to look back to Ducky but restrains himself. There's checking and then there's being insulting. If Ducky hadn't reached the same conclusion as his assistants, he'd have said something by now. "Saunders was a Physician Assistant at the Sewells Point. Would she have had a defibrillator?" This time he does include the older Doctor.

"Defibrillators were portable at that time, approximately twice the size of current ones," Ducky confirms, "but wasn't she a Medic outside the Clinic?"

"Aventine Volunteer Ambulance."

"It is possible she might have had the equipment on hand. It is not common for Volunteer Ambulance personnel to keep themselves outfitted off duty but it's not unknown either."

"That's why I have DiNozzo checking with the Ambulance. I want to know if she had her own device or if the killer brought it with him."

"Well, I can tell you two things about the defibrillators back in the day. They were big enough to need their own moderate sized suitcase and they were expensive."

"Not on an heiress' budget."

"There is that."

He'll have DiNozzo and his sub-Team double check that with John Gage. If she did keep such extensive equipment with her, they may be looking at a crime of opportunity, a murderer using her own equipment against her.

Rule Number 8, 'don't take anything for granted', warns him that he's working off a lot of suppositions, but in his gut it feels right. He has the feeling that whoever killed Saunders tortured her and did her in right in her own home. If someone had a motive to kill her, it's certain that it's someone who also knew about the secret room. If Annette Saunders had been using it for private dates with Devlin, things that her bedroom was not sufficient for; or if she had a reason for secrecy, then perhaps their last date had not turned out well.

xxx

McGregor House being for the foreseeable future a Crime Scene in which the Forensics Team is still gathering minutia, Paul Saunders has had to seek accommodation in a hotel and to send his small staff elsewhere. It is from that hotel that DiNozzo and McGee bring him this Saturday to the Conference Room where Gibbs and Pride wait. McGee has obtained Saunders' Cell Phone under the pretext that signals from it can interfere with electronic systems in the Cyber Crime section. He'll return it when the man departs and won't mention that he used the opportunity to download Saunders' Contact List.

Saunders, when he sits down at the Conference table, doesn't look like he has managed any adjustment since Thursday night. He looks like he hasn't slept at all, a conclusion Gibbs is fairly confident in.

"Good afternoon," Pride says. "Thank you for coming."

"Coming? I turned everything over to my Office Manager 'cause I can't face anything else."

"What does your company do?" The intent, by having Pride take the lead, is to disarm. Saunders has already been confronted by Gibbs in the earliest hours of yesterday morning and likely thought he knew what to expect. While the man isn't a suspect, it helps to always keep witnesses off balance by doing other than what they expect. This is Pride's Rule Seventeen, Gibbs' Forty Nine.

"Our main project right now is a micro copier, a portable rod twelve inches long that'll render perfect duplicates at 1,000 pixels per millimeter, 8.25 inches leaving 3.75 for the software and none of that matters. Tell me about my sister. Are you really sure it's her?"

"We're sure."

"What can you tell us" Gibbs asks. "about the last time you saw your sister?"

He shakes his head. "I don't remember a last time. Up to then, things were normal. I only remember how the nightmare started. I remember Police, Detectives coming to the house, a lot. The Navy came. Investigators. I remember there were a lot of questions, but after the first day or so I'd be sent to my room when anyone came."

"Do you remember how your family took it?" Pride asks.

"They were scared. No answers. No one had any idea. She was gone and no one knew where. Navy Agents – from your organization. I do remember that."

"That was us," Gibbs tells him.

Pride nods in confirmation.

Saunders looks closely, studies their faces minutely. "I don't remember you. I was a kid. I don't remember anyone. I don't remember any question. I only remember that she was never found. Year after year of praying and my grandmother and parents crying and - and nothing. And now it turns out I was passing her over and over again every day for dec–."

He's silenced, fights grief and it's a minute before his gruff voice becomes loud enough to hear. "How can this be happening? It's a nightmare."

x

"Your sister was a Physician's Assistant," Gibbs tells him, determined to keep him in focus. The term is broad enough to cover Doctors, Nurses, Paramedics, EMTs and others, as there is only one official Physician at a facility. PA is a significant step down from Heiress.

"Yes," he replies, a little less vague.

"Did she keep any equipment at home?" Such as a portable defibrillator, he doesn't say.

Paul shrugs, head down. "I don't know what she kept. She had a closet in her room I wasn't allowed anywhere near. After she was gone... After she was gone I did look in there, but it was empty. Stripped to the bare walls." He looks up. "Since her room was never used again, I guess I couldn't give up hope that she might one day come back, the closet's still empty."

x

"You did a lot of renovating in the past couple of months. How is it that no one found the secret room?"

"It was surface renovation, no structural changes. Mostly outside. They spruced up the rooms, replaced some woodwork that had seen better days, some dry wall, a lot of paint. That wall was only painted, I brought in some artists to bring up the pictures which had faded. I'm going to open the house for tours, keep the Saunders name in the public eye, like it used to be."

"Did you know about it?" he asks, paying such strict attention that Saunders should feel his eyes boring into his skull.

"I was surprised when you showed it to me. I had no idea."

Gibbs reads no deception, but he's not done. "Did you know anyone she worked with, anyone she was close to?"

Again that head shake. "My life revolved around school, television and playing. I had my friends, we were eight, nine and ten. I'd hop on my skate board down the long driveway and skate over to meet them. We'd go off and do our things. If she was dating anyone or anything like that, I neither knew nor cared. I'm sorry."

Gibbs can't fault him. He had been nine, had probably barely related to a sister two and a half times his age.


	10. Frail as an Ewok

Chapter Ten  
Frail as an Ewok

"What've you got?" is an unrehearsed duet from Gibbs and Pride to their agents, the latter's team occupying two desks adjacent to and on the other side of the partition from Gibbs' and Ziva's desks. They stand to be part of the conversation which DiNozzo leads.

"Ziva, Chris and I are about to present the warrant for the Ambulance Service for their records. I want to check out the older members of the team who were there when she was."

The parents and grandmother are dead and he doesn't hold high hopes for many of the old timers, who probably left the Service when they got too old to volunteer any longer. He'll lay odds that a significant portion of them moved.

"Ducky's team," such a strange thought, "all think she was killed by a defibrillator, probably tortured. I want to know if she had one in the house or if the killer brought it with him."

"Shape of those burns, we can't rule out simple separated and frayed wires plugged into a 120 outlet."

"We're not ruling out anything."

x

McGee reports that his trip with Michelle and Meredith, while not saying that it hadn't been an entirely unpleasant six hours in the car with two beautiful women, had been a bust in the wrong sense. "According to the records, which you probably read back in the day, Lieutenant Saunders had a good career at Norfolk, was well liked the way a beautiful and personable woman would be–"

"Are you sensing a male chauvinist viewpoint?" Brody asks David from over the partition.

"McGee does not know how to be a male chauvinist."

"His wife would slap something else beside his head," DiNozzo assures them.

 _"But,"_ McGee continues his report, "no one we spoke to who was at the Clinic at the time, a grand total of two people, could remember any reason anyone might have had to kill her. She seemed to fit in well, no outstanding tensions, at least none they remembered."

"Remembering is the real issue here," Pride says, not quite able to mask the frustration which is common to all Cold Cases. "There doesn't seem to be anyone left who's emotionally involved other than the nine year old brother."

"And the hot headed boyfriend," Gibbs counters, "who twenty one years ago had several witnesses who put him at home, and no forensic evidence to contradict that."

"You didn't have Abby back then," DiNozzo points out.

"She's going over everything in the files, but the physical evidence went to Annapolis. It'll be here this afternoon."

xxx

Siobhan McGee drives onto the Navy Yard and then to the south end but, though she could use the underground garage, she intends only to stay a few minutes, enough to pick up some papers before heading on to Saint Mary the Virgin. She hasn't been there in nine days, not since Timmy's unexpected announcement cleared the way for her to take a week off, but now on this Saturday morning she does have to get back to work. It takes more to prepare for a Sunday morning than the average person realizes.

Additionally she's still working to prepare her schedule, and to child-proof the apartment for six year old Bridget's week long visit next week. That event had been scheduled for October, not the first week in August, but since her older sister Lenore had called with the change of schedule, relaxed preparation has been changed to fast track rush, with a week lost because of that enforced Suspension Cruise.

She'd called Ducky yesterday afternoon to see if there was anything she could do on this latest case of her husband's, but as the woman they're working on was a Methodist, she had passed the word on to her associate John Grant, who will come in today to offer Last Rites. She has only to pick up her papers and go.

She opens the door of her green Fiesta and immediately regrets doing so, for she's opened an oven door and has no choice but to step into it and cook. She considers closing the door again but the building's only across the street from the lot. She'll traverse the short distance, but she won't to enjoy it.

Crossing the lot and street, thinking about the air conditioned lobby – 96 in the shade today - she reaches the walkway headed by the large NCIS sign when she hears a voice from behind her yell her name. She turns, surprised to find Sammy Sky, clad in her short sleeved blue scrubs, running after her on her pink cross tied ballet slippers.

"Slow down," she says when the smaller woman catches her. "It's way too hot to run."

"Oh God, are you right!" She nearly collapses on the sign but jumps away, her forearms burnt on the sunlit metal. " _Darn_ it!" She rubs her bare forearms and Siobhan suspects 'darn it' isn't what the woman had been thinking. "I'm on a break because Ducky and I are going to start on another body, one from Rosa Arnell's team while Jimmy finishes on the mummified corpse we found and you don't give a darn about that."

"I care about all of your Charges. But I _am_ wondering what would inspire you to do a sprint like that in this heat wave." She reaches into her purse and pulls out a handkerchief trimmed at the edges in lace and hands it to the grateful woman. Despite her light clothing, that exertion had left Sammy with a sheen of perspiration that threatens to become a wash.

"I saw you get out of your car. I needed to catch you before you got inside. I need to talk to you." She collapse-leans against the large NCIS sign, resting her hip against the unlit edge before returning the kerchief. "But you're right, I shouldn't have run. I'm just a frail little girl."

"Frail. You're as frail as an Ewok."

Her high laugh causes several passing men and women to turn to her and she forces the merriment down. She spends a few moments leaning on the sign and recovering her scorching breath while Siobhan waits to learn what was so urgent.

"Perhaps if we went up to my office?"

"I think that'd be a really good idea," she pants.

xx

The trip is short, the air conditioned corridors a welcome relief and when they reach the fourth floor office Sammy's glad of the privacy. She has never been here but what she sees isn't what she'd expected. Truthfully she hadn't known what to expect, but the single couch on the long right wall, three filing cabinets lining the left wall, desk with black Executive chair facing the far wall and only a single crucifix with the figure's arms reaching forward instead of being nailed to the gibbet doesn't meet any inchoate mental image she'd formed.

When the door is closed Sammy turns and looks up to the taller woman. "Mother McGee?"

The change of address is notable. "Yes?"

"If I ask you a question, would you tell me the truth?"

Siobhan's first reaction is offense but she pushes it down. "Of _course_." Well, maybe not as far down as she'd thought. She tries again, gives the young woman a pleasant face.

"Please, don't be mad," Sammy pleads. "It's just that I've spoken to Tina and Melanie and Rosa and Susan and Rachael and Jean and Linda and Carla and Patti and Lynn and Lisa and Abby and... and it doesn't help." Siobhan had allowed her face to show her thought at that impressive list. "And Michelle talks about always and past lives, that she's known and loved Jimmy in over a dozen incarnations and Abby has rules that get fulfilled or she won't go forward and everyone who was with Ziva is dead, you know?"

She's not sure. "Perhaps you should ask your question."

"How long did it take for you and Tim?"

x

This sounds like it's going to encroach into the personal. Deeply into it. "For me and Tim to what?"

"For you to know he was the One."

"Ah. Abby told me on the cruise that you're seeing someone."

"Not just someone." Siobhan can hear the young woman's enthusiasm rev up. "His name is Bill - William Marsters. He's an artist I met a bit before you all went on vacation, while you guys were all working on that drone thingy. I met him right out front at that sign that tried to burn my arms off. He was here because they wanted him to do a portrait of the Yard Captain, not a picture but a real portrait. We didn't just hit it off, I'm ca- _razy_ about him and he is about me. Or was and will be again when he gets used to my autopsies. That's why I wan– _need_ to know."

"Is he the one."

"I don't mean the one, the really special guy. How did – when did you know that Tim was THE One, the _very_ one, the ab-so-lute-ly one and _ONLY_ One for you? How long did it take?"

Siobhan looks past her to the wall, to the crucifix affixed over her desk, and offers a brief prayer for wisdom, for the right words. She has to give a fair answer if she's to advise this young woman at all, but she's never been sure she'd ever contemplated this thing objectively. It wasn't something that happened, she believes it was always there. Finally she looks down into the pale blue eyes staring so longingly into hers. "Forty-five minutes."

"COME ON!" she begs, uncharacteristic tears invading the corners of those eyes. "I'm Serious!"

"So am I." She opens her hand toward the couch and when Sammy does sit down she steps past, pulls out the black leather chair from behind the desk, turns it about and sits down, leans back into the chair, looks back to a day never forgotten. "It was Bethesda High School, our Junior year. The school bordered a huge park so taking Break Time there, especially in the Fall or Spring, was popular. It was Indian Summer then, just turned October I think. One afternoon between classes I was sitting out on the grass on the edge of the woods with a writing pad. In those days I was the one who had the dream to write the next Great American Novel. I was thinking, staring off into the trees, trying to sort out some particularly thorny plot point I don't even remember when this utterly _Nerdy_ kid came along and asked if he could sit down on the grass with me. Well, it was a huge lawn and no one _ever_ asked, they just did, and he struck up a conversation. For the life of me I could never tell you what it was about, neither probably could he, but by the next Class I knew."

"Schoolgirl crush?"

"Ahhh - no. No, it was the real thing. I was madly, passionately, heels-over-head in love with Timothy no-middle-initial McGee, and within a few days he caught up. Girls mature so much faster than boys, you know." Sammy grins. "Well, one day in late October we were back in that park, sitting on the grass and he was trying to teach me math. I really needed Saint Jude back then because I was a hopeless cause if ever there was one. Well, I'd had enough of math I couldn't get, so I leaned over and kissed him."

"Just like that?"

"You should've _seen_ his face."

"I can imagine."

"Well, we were in love. I'd said it first, he said he was in love with me, and it was the real thing, our relationship that is, not just out of control male hormones." She considers. "No, I take that back, there were male hormones... and female hormones... and not a lot of control going on. And yes, I was a girly-girl; I'll be the first to admit it. I had a notebook I covered page after page of with versions of my 'Mrs.' signature. I was a Cheerleader whose boyfriend came to every game and through all our Junior and Senior years I don't think he ever got a clue as to what a 'Down' or a 'Scrimmage' were," Sammy giggles and she too smiles at the fond memory, "He joined the Squad, then one of the very few boys to do so, had a Letter sweater and everything. I saw through it, of course. Among other maneuvers, he loved to catch us coming off the pyramid, but I was his favorite one to catch. He got in a lot of practice being naughty about it."

"I'll _bet._ "

"Those uniform micro skirts still covered a multitude of sins." Sammy giggles. "For two years we were..." She considers, there really is only one word to describe those years. "Heavenly."

x

"And then?" Sammy can virtually see them walking down the aisle as teens, but she knows – having been at their wedding – that the reality was far different. Very far.

"He went to Maryland and I went to New York City."

"Oh, No!"

"And I cried my eyes out for months because we were separated, the love of my life was gone and it was over."

"But if you and he separated..."

Siobhan leans back in the black leather chair. "You see, Sammy, I believe that, like any father, our Father wants the very best for us that there could possibly be. So He showed us each other, gave us two mind-boggling years together, then sent us away until we were ready. I couldn't have become the person I am had I stayed in Virginia, neither could he if he hadn't gone off to become Tim McGee, Agent Extraordinaire and Bestselling Author."

Sammy grins. No, the woman doesn't think much of her husband, does she?

"So we were given fifteen years to grow up and become ourselves, then He put us back together. That was two years ago and it's been an utterly insane ride that led all the way up to March and today."

"I don't think I could stand fifteen years," she says, trying to convey the pain and longing to a woman who's experienced the same. "I want Bill _now_."

x

Siobhan sits forward, lowers her voice, makes Sammy listen. "Sammy, I firmly believe that, if you allow Him to - and it always comes down to your allowing Him to - He will bring you to that One Special Person who will complete you as you will him. If that's William, great. If not, he's out there, somewhere. And if this that you have with him is wrong then nothing either of you can do can make it right, but if he _is_ the One, then nothing _anyone_ can do can prevent it."

"But how will I _know_?"

She sits back, an image of confidence. "You'll know. What are you, 23?"

"August 26th. He'll be 24 in two weeks, sixteen days ahead of mine."

"You have time. But you, young lady, come with a lot of facets."

"You mean bisexual submissive who's probably too experimental for her own good and who spends entirely too much time with anonymous partners at 'Taiwan On' and 'Sodom and Gomorrah', the two liveliest BDSM Clubs in DC – though S&M's not my thing, I just like being tied up and – well... not intercourse since I met Bill but things just a little short – who slices people up by day and plays Orchestral violin by night?"

Put like that it's more than enough, but with this young woman "That's a start."

"We met here, right out by the NCIS sign, me in my scrubs like this, and he came to my playing in a performance of Franz Liszt's most popular works the other night. It ended with my favorite, Les Preludes, which if you've ever seen 'Flash Gordon'; the real one, not the 1980 nonsense; you know that a lot of the music for those Saturday morning serials came straight from the classics."

"Oh yes." She'd seen 'Flash Gordon: Space Soldiers Conquer the Universe' as one film at the Memorial Day Convention and had recognized the music, though broken up into appropriate backgrounds for scenes rather than as a complete concert. "So you share some of the same tastes?"

"Yes. And I discussed that whole sex thing with him. He's fine with it."

"'Fine'." She pauses, searches for the right words to cut through to the younger woman but that won't lose her. "Sammy, it's been my experience that many men would be 'fine' with having a woman who obeys his commands, lets him tie her up and control her, especially if she's fine with bringing another woman into the mix. But what does that grow into?"

"It's not like that," she says, eyes narrowed, a definite edge in her tone.

"Great. Glad to hear it."

x

Siobhan waits a measured fifteen count, then "Shall I take it that he does tie you up?"

"Err, no, he doesn't. I want to keep that aspect separate from our relationship. I know what you're going to say, Abby says it too often, that I'm cutting half my life - my sex life - out and not even finding out if he'd be good with it beyond talk. But Bill - I want to keep our sex very vanilla." She looks away, unable to keep Siobhan's eyes. "I so rarely do vanilla."

"How is that going?"

"I think I'm right. Abby says I'm crazy, that I can't keep the woman I am bottled up because I think he won't take it other than as talk, but I'm right and she's wrong. I'm going to be vanilla with Bill... and flavored elsewhere but _no sex_. I am not cheating on Bill."

"Abby thinks you're not being yourself?" She knows the young woman less than she should. But even if Samantha isn't officially a member of Enkiss she's so frequently an adjunct to Ducky's team that she might as well be official. Government. Well, she doesn't have an actual file on the woman she can consult, but Samantha and Abby live together since the time the Apprentice Pathologist had been accused of murder - the uncomfortable subject and plot of Timmy's next book she won't read in advance due to the many changes from reality - so she'll defer to Abby's judgment.

"I can hack it. It's no one else's _business_."

"Whatever you think best. I'm not going to advise you on that unless you ask me to." Sammy turns back. "I'm just saying take your time in this relationship."

"How much time?"

"That's for you. Timmy and I took nineteen years from meeting to wedding, and believe me there were a lot of ecstasies, heartaches, fulfillments, agonies and tears along with the joys. No one can shield anyone from them, there'll be a lot of tears mingled with the laughs. But remember, you also have good friends who care about you. Don't shut us out."

"I won't." Sammy pushes off the couch, takes a step away toward the door. "Thank you." She starts to leave but the Priest's upraised hand halts her.

"Now," she says, pointing to the couch, "sit back down and tell me what it is that you've avoided telling me."

"What makes you think I've been avoiding telling you something."

"Well, I've never claimed to have a direct line to God, but He didn't make me stupid either. If joy were electricity, you normally go around like someone who refuses to pull her finger out of the socket," Sammy grins at the appropriateness of the image, "but joy has been the only emotion you haven't expressed since we started talking about William."

She sits back down. "I've got to be less predictable."

"I hope not, I've only recently gotten a reasonable line on you. Now what's wrong?"

x

Sammy seems as though she'd keep the secret, but finally gives up. "We were on a date Thursday night; Bill wanted to see this Mansion that just opened up to the public, thought he could find some artistic inspiration. A friend of his was invited but couldn't go so gave him the invitation. He invited me, I invited Abby since I hadn't seen her for a week and the three of us found Annette Saunders."

Siobhan holds her silence, makes the girl fill it. "He freaked. Not one of those bounce-off-the-walls freak outs, a quiet one. He _knew_ I'm an ME, or rather working to be one, that'll take years more for my License but it's like he knew it but only in his head. He was presented with the very real reality of what I am – and though we talk, now it's not... exactly the same."

"How do you feel about that?"

"Scared. I'm scared that he found out, or may find out, something about me that'll drive him away."

"Do you believe that?"

She sighs heavily, slumps forward. "I don't know."

.  
*/*/*/*/*/*/*

.

Author's Note: To hear a bit of the concert Sammy told Siobhan about, look up Les Preludes by Franz Lidst.


	11. The Nosy People Are Back

Chapter Eleven  
The Nosy People are Back

Gibbs and Pride, having sent DiNozzo, David and LaSalle back to the Aventine Ambulance Service, work on what aspects of the case they can, with Pride at DiNozzo's desk and Brody at Ziva's when Gibbs' phone rings. It's a short conversation, culminating in his announcement as he leaves his desk: "The Evidence is in from Annapolis and is being delivered to Abby."

Unbidden, the other four agents follow. The physical evidence may be two decades old but it's more useful than the memories and suppositions they've had to work with.

xx

"Hello." "Hey, guys," Ruby and Abby call when the five emerge from the elevator and pass through the clear sliding door, the rapid beeps piping them in. "It's Christmas," Abby announces of the boxes that she and Ruby Rae pile high on her Evidence Table. "Well, actually, not Christmas, since this is July even though some Theologians say this is probably when Jesus was born since that was when the Census took place but it's not really Christmas now, that'd be kind of gross as this is evidence of a murder, but still–."

"What've you got?" Gibbs' question halts her.

"Aaaaaaaaaa - bunch of closed boxes."

Pride goes to the first, folding knife in his hand. "Rule 9."

"You know it," Gibbs says.

"Did you guys have all the same rules?" Abby asks, to which Pride reveals that

"After Number 11, they started to diverge."

"Appropriate," McGee says. "When the job is done, walk away."

"We did."

"Gibbs is up to 71," Abby says. "How about you?"

"43. Never be sure they won't knock the house down while you're inside it."

"Ohhhhh – kay," Michelle says, wondering how crazy things get in New Orleans. If Abby's an example, plenty, but "That one would probably have limited use."

"You only need it once," Pride assures her. "Twice is pushing your luck."

"Amen," Brody concurs, accepting a sheaf of papers from Rae.

x

The contents of the first box, which Abby takes firm charge of so that no one puts a hand in until she inventories and confirms everything from Rae's ancient papers, contain personal minutia such as might be found in a bedroom dresser drawer, but three plastic bags spark interest. They're diaries, small blue books of different shades with locked straps that operate more on trust than security, and all three are dated consecutively.

Gibbs selects the final one and hands it to Michelle. "To Ducky. See what he can make of it from his Psychological Autopsy thingy." He hands the other two diaries to McGee and Palmer. "You two learn her history."

"I'm studying Psychological Profiling at Tulane," Brody volunteers.

Gibbs pulls the final book from Michelle's hand and puts it in Brody's, leaving her with the previous year's. "Bring it down to Ducky. You have one hour."

"For a preliminary report?"

"To finish."

Michelle can read in the woman's eyes as she turns away to the door 'Next time I'll keep my mouth shut.'

xxx

Tony DiNozzo, accompanied again by Ziva and Chris LaSalle, stops his motor-pooled black Stratus on the curb short of the space before the large white ambulance. They're here for additional information but he doesn't want to hinder the exit of the vehicle, which could depart literally at any moment. This time, however, the white bay door is lowered but he can see the truck's upper lights through the slatted window.

The door to their left of the bay is unlocked and lets them into said bay where one of the white shirted men looks up at their unexpected entrance. They can see he's about to inquire about the reason for their entrance until recognition lights his eyes.

"Captain," he calls into the office on the right side, "the nosy people are back." But it's said with a companionable smile, which is how it's replied to and a moment later the door opens and John Gage steps out.

xx

When the trio is seated opposite the older man, DiNozzo pulls from his shirt pocket a folded sheet of paper. Gage doesn't even open it, just sets it on the desk blotter before him.

"I pulled the folders for everyone who was on the team when Annette Saunders was here," he points to a stack upon the window sill behind him, "but it's not much. We don't update after they leave so you'll have some work ahead. I couldn't even tell you how many are even still alive."

"We'll deal with it."

"I studied her file, but it's pretty dry. Dahl didn't put in a lot of personal stuff. Certifications, Licenses, copies of Unit Citations and of 'Thank You' letters that would have gone to everyone who made a particular run. Not a lot more beyond Insurance, Background checks and so forth. Those other folders aren't much fuller."

"What about Saunders' Medical Records? Our M.E. found a broken arm and broken rib, each healed. Anything in there on that?"

He pulls the folder, scanning briefly. "She had a 'Medical Deferment' for the couple of weeks in her final year, arm and rib broken, but it doesn't specify how. This was a couple of months before she disappeared. She'd have been off duty here until she healed."

"She couldn't even man the phone?"

"Not a chance. I certainly wouldn't allow it; there's too much chance she would have to work a short-handed shift and you can't lift a stretcher into the truck with a broken rib." He double checks the folder. "Yeah, no reason given. If it were me there would have been," he assures them, his opinion of the omission clear in his face and tone.

x

"We appreciate everything you've done," Chris LaSalle assures him.

"Wish it could be more. I never knew her, of course, but when I think something could happen to any of the members we have now, I'd want to contribute to a solution."

"We do have more questions," DiNozzo says.

"I expected you would."

"Would she have had her own defibrillator?"

Gage's expression is enough of an answer. "Her own defibrillator?" He considers the point. "I can't understand why. According to her file she worked in Sewells Point Clinic at the Navy Base and they'd have their own, possibly several. We have two here, State-of-the-Art models; back then they'd still have had one here like I used in LA. That was a big thing, twelve by nine in its own case. It was portable, at least that's what it was billed as, but I was glad we had a Squad and I didn't have to carry it more than short distances. And it was expensive so we took good care of it."

"But would she have had one?"

Gage considers the point. "I can't speak for back then, what Nathaniel Dahl would have allowed, but unlike Volunteer Fire Departments where the guys keep their gear at home and will run or drive when the siren sounds, Medical equipment is specialized. If she were on duty at that Clinic or here, she'd have what she needed. I don't forbid my people from having supplies, 'Emergency' is just what it says, but I don't encourage them having a full truckload either."

"So she could, but unlikely."

"I'd say so. She might have a First Aid kit at home, but she'd hardly need specialized equipment."

Nevertheless, they do know from Gibbs and Pride's interview with Paul that Annette Saunders kept a mysterious closet full of things off limits to the little brother.

The problem with a mysterious closet from two decades ago is that there's no way for them to say that, despite the certainty of the man before them, that Saunders didn't have the equipment. 'You can't prove a negative'; DiNozzo decides it ought to be one of his Rules. The only thing they knew for certain is that, if she had wanted the stuff, she certainly could have afforded it.

"We think she might have had a closet full of medical equipment, including a defibrillator, that the family cleaned out some time after she disappeared. If they gave it to you, would there be a record?"

"I don't know. There might, if I had a clue as to where or when to look, or it might have been accepted as a donation and not recorded. They might get a receipt for taxes–"

"The family was richer than a Politician."

"So maybe yes or maybe no. If you could give me a clue as to when to look for it I could try, but don't get your hopes up."

"Story of our lives."

x

He shrugs. "Just what is this interest in defibrillators?"

They're alone and Gage had been 3,000 miles away when Annette Saunders was killed, so "We think she was killed, possibly tortured first, with a defibrillator."

"Wow. What makes you think that?"

"Forty marks covering her torso." Gage's expression makes Tony ask "What?"

"I'm thinking. Defibrillator generally work at 1,000 volts. It's meant to shock a heart that's having ventricular fibrillation or tachycardia. It stops the heart for a moment so the natural rhythm can reestablish itself. Think of it like slapping the face of a hysterical person. But if you use it to _cause_ an asystolic state, you would need CPR or intravenous medications that I can name, or something like adrenaline pumped right into the heart together with CPR. If you're going to stop the heart that many times and then use CPR each time to bring her back... I'm sorry, I can't see it."

"What about a partial charge?"

"What's that?"

The question catches DiNozzo short. "Partial, like not fully charged to a thousand."

"No, I'm trying to tell you that's not how it works. The one we had back then in LA didn't fire until it was up to a thousand, or four hundred Joules, depending upon the scale you wanted to use: full power. And I haven't seen one since that will."

"So someone did go all the way more than twenty times?" It's not a pretty picture at all.

Gage shakes his head. "That's not torture, that's repeated murder."

xx

In the black Stratus, and in this moment all three agents are in full agreement that a black car in a mid-Summer heat wave has to be the decision of a bureaucrat, Tony touches the speed dial on his phone.

/Special Agent McGee./

"Tim, check Saunders' financial records. She may or may not have bought a defibrillator on her own. The best we can get is guesstimate that she _probably_ wouldn't have."

/Let me guess, it wasn't against the rules but she wouldn't have needed it off duty./

"You got it, buddy. I'm thinking she planned for local emergencies, like a grandmother with a heart problem." The woman had died of a heart attack five months after Saunders had gone missing, which irony is lost on no one.

/Will do./


	12. Diaries

Chapter Twelve  
Diaries

Gibbs leads Pride into the Autopsy Suite exactly one hour from the moment when he'd turned over the blue diary to Meredith Brody, but he hadn't expected to walk into a Master Class; Ducky, Jimmy, Sammy and Meredith gathered in chairs at the senior ME's desk, all of them intent upon the small volume open in Ducky's hands.

"I thought you had a couple of bodies to Autopsy."

"Oh, Jethro," Ducky remonstrates him, turning back, "one cannot perform a Psychological Autopsy in the same room where a physical one is taking place. The conversations and the recorded observations are much too distracting."

"What about you?" Pride asks Brody.

An hour ago she'd volunteered to help and now she admits "I am in awe of this man. I thought I was doing well because I was passing my class, but Doctor Mallard has plumbed depths I don't think Professor Sondhelm knew existed."

"Oh, please, call me Ducky. And how old is your Professor?"

"About 40."

"Well, there you have it," he says, as though all the other man needs is another three decades to learn his trade.

"I'm interested in what we have here," Gibbs declares.

x

"We have here," Ducky begins in tones that warn his regular listeners that he's revving up a pedantic lecture; Gibbs has learned not to despise them, for in each he goes away having learned something, even if he doesn't fully understand what that may be, "the essence of Lieutenant Saunders' thoughts, hopes, ambitions and dreams from the beginning of the year until the morning of April 23, the day she went missing. Her final entry speaks of little of consequence other than preparations for the weekend which she intended to spend with her boyfriend Jerry Devlin, whom she had not seen in three days. She does note that her parents will, on that evening, take Mr. Saunders' mother out for the evening, leaving her with little to do after work.

"Most of her entries on medical matters deal with the events of the days, whether in the Sewells Point Clinic or with the Aventine Ambulance Service. She was very specific about what she had learned in both venues, essentially recording training notes to which she could refer on later occasions."

Both McGee and David had noted the same in the bullpen, though in considerably simpler language.

"Nothing on her own injuries?" David had found the first entry about the injury in her reading of the previous year's book. The specific cause had been aggravatingly absent, so he'd directed her to look into references to Jerry Devlin for that time.

"Only indirectly. She refers on January 12, 26 and February 9 that she still feels pain in her ribs and arm, but that is the extent of it. She never specified the reason for these complaints."

The appropriate book will be upstairs then. He'll have David work from the back. "What about the boyfriend, Devlin?"

"Her references to him are not only to be termed romantic, but are excessively detailed and imaginative."

The grins Meredith and Samantha share remove any desire to pursue this. "She afraid of him?"

"She does not indicate that she was. However, two days before she disappeared, April 21, she mentions having sustained an injury that limited her work for a projected week's time, but she did not specify what it was or the cause."

"Can you find out?"

"I believe I have, though not directly through this text. There was a marked trauma to her left shoulder and we, that is Doctor Palmer," he clarifies with a glance to the younger man, "found evidence that it had been dislocated. The flesh, though dried, was stained with blood and I estimate the injury took place some 72 hours before her death. That was not a truly debilitating injury. She would, in fact, be able to have the ball joint restored to the rotator cuff. The lingering pain would have limited her movement but she would have healed of most of the painful aftermath within the week. Her diary entries indicate she did not report the injury at the Norfolk Clinic, which explains why she was on duty on the final day she was accounted for."

"Could she have worked?"

"Yes, and the Clinic would have been an excellent resource for such pain medications as she might have needed."

x

"Think Devlin did it?"

"She does not specify the cause of her injury, merely the fact; which, as I said, she withheld from her Command."

"Can you find anything to make you think she was afraid of him?"

"From her entries, I judge their relationship to be prosperous. It is true that his temper is noted several times but she seemed convinced she could wean him from that. Jethro, this diary tells me of a young woman dedicated to her profession beyond the terms of a career. She volunteered weekly with an Ambulance Service because she felt it to be an additional expression of her concern for her fellows. While she garnered considerable satisfaction from her time at Sewells Point, she seemed to have derived greater pride and satisfaction in going out into the Community and applying her skills."

"What skills did she have?" The designation of Physician's Assistant isn't helpful since it applies to everyone except the Chief Physician.

"She was a Licensed Practical Nurse with Certification in Trauma Care."

"Sounds like someone who would have a AED."

"If so, it still leaves us with the same question. If she did have one, who killed her with it?"

"I hoped you could tell me that."

"Unfortunately, for all the detail placed in this book on many subjects, the amorous ones being rather too detailed, there is no hint that she felt threatened or even apprehensive about anyone in her life."

x

The reviews he and Pride had done of the Case File and their own notes indicated that if she had died at home, as is now proven to be the case, there had been no red flags. No neighbor had seen anything amiss, interviews with her co-workers in Norfolk had given no clues about stress or danger, and though the boyfriend's prints had been all over the house from doorknob to her bedroom, his alibi had at that time been unbroken. Several family members had vouched that Devlin had been at home for the entire evening, and that had been for a traditional Game Night which included both immediate family and relatives. Granted they could have been covering, but each had been interviewed separately and frequently. On no occasion could their stories be made to slip.

More detailed checks from previously mentioned door knob throughout the house had given no indication that anyone had been on the property whose identification and bona fides had not been satisfactorily verified. Interviews with the household staff, neighbors and friends had hinted there were no strangers noticed in the area around the time of Annette's disappearance, and it had seemed then as though at the time the woman had disappeared she had been home alone, though the brother had reported he had been asleep and hadn't seen her there.

Gibbs signals to Pride that they should return to the Bullpen, but before he goes he waves Brody to join them.

xxx

Tony is about to get onto the elevator from the Lobby to Operations on the third floor but when the door opens he finds his path blocked by a familiar figure. "Well, if it isn't Doctor Kate's sister." He's the only one who addresses Rachel Cranston so informally, and the Psychiatrist allows it as useful insight into his nature, no matter what mistaken impression it might give to any hearers. "What brings you into our bailiwick?"

"Don't you already know?"

"Now how could I possibly kn– Oh, no."

"Jennifer Shepherd called me this morning, something about 'make up exams'. She said you and the other members of your team would know all about them."

"We do." He sees a stacking of the deck, with Director Shepherd's hands on the cards. The team, as well as Abby and the Autopsy Gremlin, had failed their Annual Psych Evaluations, meaning they cannot work as Agents until that critical matter is rectified. It had led them to be aboard the Pacific Princess on what was intended to be a relaxation cruise, a chance to unwind and get their heads back on so they could retake and pass the Evaluations. No one could have predicted what had happened instead.

Now they're back in DC, at work on a Saturday late afternoon, still Suspended and not allowed to work a case except that the other eleven teams are swamped and the Saunders case had figuratively fallen into their laps, the follow up on Gibbs' Investigation from twenty one years ago.

They're not bending the rules by being here on the job, they're completely shattering them.

And here, playing her hand in a stacked deck, is the one Psychiatrist they can relate to – within reason. At least, if there is little comfort, there's trust.

x

"So, what does that make you think?" Rachel asks.

"Oh, no," he counters with a grin, "you're not launching into me first thing. If I'm to be plied for my secrets, I want to be wined and dined first."

"We could see about some dinner, but the whining is definitely going to be all from you."

"Have I ever told you how much alike you and your sister are?"

"Often. Usually when you're trying to distract me. Hasn't worked yet."

"I know what the Director has in mind; a cushy interview and the good Evaluation is practically a 'gimme'."

"Oh, no. I'm not going to go easy on any of you. I can't. And what I expect from you is definitely the gimme."

xxx

When Gibbs returns to the bullpen with Pride and Brody after the very unsatisfying conclusion to the most recent thread in the investigation he's pleased to see Palmer and David at their desks but "Where's DiNozzo?"

"He is in the Conference Room with Doctor Cranston," Ziva reports.

"We don't have time for that today. Could've used her to do some real work. You find out about those bones?" When Ducky had found references to the injuries giving Saunders pain in early January, he'd called ahead to have Ziva read last year's diary from the end.

"I read from New Year's Eve back to Labor Day but all I found was in October, where she complained she wasn't allowed to work because her rib and arm were hurt. She doesn't mention how she was injured, only that from the second week of October until after Thanksgiving she was sidelined. I'm working my way back into the summer."

"First grab your gear. You too, Palmer."

"Where are we going?" Ziva asks, pulling out the drawer that contains her shield and Sig.

"You, Palmer and Brody are going to interview Debbie Devlin." He'd already seen the wife about the abuse the woman was allegedly suffering at the hands of her husband. If this is true, even though they can't take action without a complaint through NCIS - _very_ unlikely - they can use any verification of violence to tie it to the discoveries Ducky and his team are making on or in Saunders.

"When it started and under what circumstances?" Brody confirms.

"That'll do for a start."

"Should we wait for Doctor Cranston?" Michelle asks, only to decide from Gibbs' stare what a bad idea that had been.

xxx

The light green Devlin home is shaded in the late afternoon, all the blinds and curtains closed though the broiling sun sets behind it rather than through the front windows as the three women approach. Meredith Brody wishes they could have dispensed with the white on black lettered caps but at least they don't have to cook in the somewhat intimidating jackets. If they're here to present a friendly, supportive face to a woman who is quite probably suffering physical abuse at the hands of her husband, the man who is supposed to support and protect her, the last thing they should do is to present an official enforcement front.

She takes off the black cap, holding it down at her side by the rear band and immediately feels cooler, 97 degrees instead of 99, even if she must now contend with the setting sun above the house shining into her eyes until she gets close enough to get the protection of the slanted roof. The other women follow suit.

She misses the Louisiana breezes. While the thermometer does hit the same numbers, New Orleans heat rarely tries to crawl into her tee shirt with her. She'd have dispensed with a bra as Michelle evidently has, except Dwayne would bring it up later.

She pauses at the raised stone platform, as does Michelle to allow Ziva, as ranking agent, to approach and knock upon the door.

x

It takes three determined tries on door and bell before the lock clicks off from the inside and the door opens to the three inch limit of the chain. It allows only half a face and one eye to show through. "What do you want?"

"Mrs. Devlin?" Ziva asks. Michelle and Meredith flank her a pace behind, trying to appear non-threatening yet quite prepared for any surprise move on the apprehensive woman's part.

Ziva's question is a courtesy only. The woman is in her mid-twenties as opposed to her mid-forties husband, might stand at five nine if she stood up straight and she looks out at them with brown eyes drowning in suspicion. They had no doubt about her identity, she's a near perfect match for her Driver's License photo except for the suspicion that pervades her expression.

"Who're you?"

There are disadvantages to removing their identifying caps but Ziva has her shield and IDs ready for display. "Naval Criminal Investigative Service." She introduces herself and her team. "We would like to ask you some questions."

"What do you want?"

She does experience a certain disjointed communication sometimes when she restricts herself to English, but she does not enjoy it. "To ask you some questions."

"What about?"

"May we come in?"

The consideration is considerably longer than she usually encounters, but eventually the young woman does step back, partially closes the door, slides aside the chain bolt and admits them.

"For a minute."

"Thank you."

x

Debbie Devlin wears a long sleeved housecoat that covers her from closed neck to knees, but as she walks into the living room the agents see her movements are careful and controlled, slow and precise, except that she imperfectly compensates for pain in her right hip. She eases herself onto the couch and her three visitors take seats about her without seeming to surround her.

"What do you want?" she repeats to Ziva.

"We are investigating a case in which your husband, Jerome Devlin, is a Material Witness."

"You're the ones who went to him yesterday?"

"Not us personally, but other Special Agents."

"About a woman who disappeared over twenty years ago? Why are you bothering us? We had nothing to do with that."

They don't doubt her innocence, considering that Debbie had been less than 4 years old when Saunders had died. But her husband had been 25, had a well noted temper and had been dating Saunders, whose diaries and work records note several yet-to-be-explained injuries.

"As I said, your husband was a witness to that crime."

"My husband didn't 'witness' anything. We have nothing to do with this. If this is all you're interested in, then I think you should leave now."

Michelle takes a quarter step forward. "Does he hurt you?"

x

The unexpected question catches Debbie short and a wealth of information flashes in her face long before she can say " _No_! What are you talking about?"

"Mrs. Devlin, I know pain and I can see it in you. You're compensating for being hurt and you don't have to be. If you're being hurt, we can help."

"I don't need any help. I'm fine. My husband does not hurt me. Now Get Out."

"Mrs. Devlin, we can help," Meredith offers. "You're obviously in great pain. Let us help you."

"I don't need any help."

"I can see the bruises," Ziva declares. Debbie clutches the front of her house dress to her chest.

"You can't see anything," she says sharply, but her tone says she knows the denial is worthless.

"Did he do that to you? Is he abusing you?"

" _No._ My husband does not _abuse_ me. Now get the hell out of here before I call the police and tell them _you_ hurt me!"

xx

As they walk slowly along the stone path to the car, Ziva surprises Meredith by looking to Michelle. "What did you sense?"

"She's in great pain, but you saw that. You also saw she was lying through her teeth."

"Tell me something I did not see."

"I didn't get much beyond pain, and a lot of that," she says, reaching for the rear car door.

"Could you have helped her?"

She looks back, annoyance flashing in her eyes. "Of _course_ I could. If she'd've _let_ me."

"Guys," Meredith says, "feeling a little out of the loop here."

Both Washington Agents turn to her, but at Palmer's brief nod Ziva says "Michelle has, I suppose you might call it, the gift of 'Laying on of Hands'."

"Oh." She considers this. It's something she's heard of when connected to the Church, but it's not a cross - well, not only a cross – that the woman wears about her neck. "Convenient."

"Not as much as you'd think," Michelle assures her.

"You asked me yesterday if I was a witch."

"Yes," is all Michelle will say. "But all of this leaves us little better than we were before. If Jerome Devlin is abusing her we can't prove it by her."

"Doctors and Hospitals can," Brody counters.

"That can establish a trend that Gibbs and Pride can use in their Investigation," Ziva declares. "It may become necessary to confront Mrs. Devlin with what we know or to bring her in. Ducky and his team–" she hesitates at the odd sound, "say there was no bruising visible at the time of death to stain the skin, other than under the skin at her shoulder, which accounts for the dislocated bone. The broken and healed bones go back half a year, at least those to her ribs and arm do, but we must determine if Devlin is indeed the source of those injuries."

"The fact Saunders doesn't say how she was hurt is enough of a red flag for me," Brody declares.

"For me too. But the burns that Jimmy and Sammy attribute to probable electric shocks Ducky concurs about but he has yet to find a definite Cause of Death other than electric shocks that might have come from a defibrillator that may or may not have been at her home. If she was being abused by Devlin we have no one who can support or contest that beyond a nine year old brother in whom she is unlikely to have confided."

x

"I find it interesting." Brody says, "that the NIS records on the Clinic show nothing about why she lost time there, only that the injuries were broken arm and rib. Pride is usually very good with records."

"The file Tony brought back from Aventine doesn't say why she was laid up for injuries," Michelle says. "I wonder if they knew."

"The Clinic's on-site files don't go back that far," Brody says, still annoyed at those long and generally wasted hours, six in a car with too little to show for it.

"I know," Michelle says, still annoyed that the Personnel files last only 10 years there and budget constraints at the time had kept much of the information from being archived on computer before the files were shipped out to storage. "As Tony would say, we're dealing with that famous river in Egypt."

"Girlfriend and wife both keeping mum," Brody says. "Girlfriend's dead," she looks back to the green house.

"The only thing we have to go on is a secret room that was evidently a surprise to Paul Saunders," Michelle concludes. "But someone knew about it well enough to keep it clean or to clean it and to place the body inside. Yet we can't even say if the murder took place in there or not."

"Where does that put us?" Brody asks.

"Gibbs would take to the boat he is building in his basement; I believe it is his seventh. For me it will be the fifty pound bag in the gym."

xxx

The sun has set by the time Michelle Palmer gets off the elevator, but she doesn't reach her apartment door at the corner of the right hall before it opens. Jimmy is on the other side so her smile is four fifths for him and the rest for the cool draft that hits her from the air conditioned living room.

"Honey, you should have told me you were coming up, I'd have met you."

She hugs and kisses him, glad of his cool body against hers. "With the air conditioner?"

"With a cold drink. It's almost a hundred out there."

"You treat me too _WELL_!" ends in a shriek as he catches her up, his hands behind her back and knees and she's too quickly in his arms before he pushes the door closed with his foot.

"I was so worried about you," he declares as he holds her close.

"Why?"

"It's a hundred degrees out there. You could get sick in all that heat."

"I got plenty of air conditioningeven when I had a witness interview."

"You could get a chill," he says, looking down at her thin blouse and miniskirt, which at the moment is riding up her thighs. She won't tell him that her breasts have started to ache, because she doesn't want to know what he'll want to do for her. Before long she's not going to be able to avoid it, but she'll try as long as she can.

"Jimmy."

"Yes?"

"Put me down."

x

But it's to the long couch that he carries her and deposits her gently upon it. "How was your day?"

"It was NCIS; you know. You worked on one end, we did on the other. But it was interesting working with Pride and his team."

"I worked this afternoon with Merry Brodie. She is _really_ very – nice," he finishes awkwardly enough to let her know the woman's niceness wasn't what had been about to slip from between his lips.

"Do I have to be jealous?" she asks with a smile that takes the sting out.

"You are the only one I make merry with." He bends down and hugs her.

"I should hope so," she assures him facetiously when he straightens, her fingers describing before her an ineffective arcane symbol.

"Want to watch some TV? I'll have dinner ready soon."

" _You'll_ have dinner ready?"

"Sure," he says, sounding quite slighted. "I can cook."

She feels she might be able to get used to this if she dared, but she'd thought she'd straightened him out yesterday. She realizes now that there was only one part of him that she'd straightened, and that the only reason he hadn't smothered her at work was because they were at work. But she's perfectly capable of doing all of her normal routines – when she can get him to let her keep her feet on the floor.

"Sweetheart, thank you but there's an old Chinese saying: 'Never let a Medical Examiner cook you dinner'." He steps back, his expression worse than if she'd slapped him. Maybe she had. "Oh, honey, I'm _sorry._ "

"I'm doing my _best._ I'm _trying!_ " He's stricken and in that moment she realizes that what she'd just thought was over-solicitousness is motivated by more than she'd thought. Pressures he'd hidden are very close to the surface and nearly broke through his wall.

x

There had been a time when she might have smiled and answered 'very', but this is not such a time. She'd seen, for that moment, into his soul and understands what's been driving him, and he's no longer driving her crazy.

She stands up and won't let him back away but pulls him into a tight hug. "Darling, I know and I really, truly love you for it. I'm sorry. This whole thing is freaking me out as much as it is you, and I'm not talking about just this case. I didn't mean to take it out on you."

Perhaps it's the long hug, but he finally does relax against her. "I forgive you."

x

Rather than draw out the moment until it becomes really maudlin, she looks up to him and asks: "What's for dinner?"

"Hot dogs." She can't keep the surprise from her eyes. "I didn't have any time to–"

"Hot dogs are fine." It's not deep dish pizza, her first choice, but it'll be good. And at least she doesn't have to worry about it making her sick - she hopes. "And who knows, if I'm still hungry later you can feed me another hot dog." She bumps her pelvis against him.

"Isn't that how all this got started?"

"Nooo, it started with a wild Tarzan who kidnapped me, dragged me to his lair and spent all afternoon attacking my poor body."

"Then this'll be part two?"

"If you're hoping for twins, mister, _forget it_." She sits down on the couch before he can think to put her down. Maybe having a totally solicitous husband isn't all that bad, provided she doesn't get used to it, and now that she knows why... "So what's on television? And anything but 'The Notebook'. That's on tonight, but it makes me cry."

"That always makes you cry."

"No crying. I've been keeping them under control but just you wait until my hormones _really_ start kicking in; _then_ you're gonna see crying."

He crosses the room, turns the cable on and scrolls through the guide. "MeTV has '240-Robert'."

"240 who?"

"It's an old show, but what else for them? I caught it two weeks ago, something of a helicopter police rescue show. Thing is, the star, you'd almost think he could be a young Agent Gibbs."

"Puh- _lease_."

"SyFy Channel has 'Star Trek: Enterprise'. After that is 'Quantum Leap'."

"It all sounds weird. Are the 'Nationals' playing?"

He scrolls further through the Favorites list. "In about twenty minutes in California, against the Dodgers."

"O _kay_. Hot dogs and baseball. Finally something sane."

xxx

Tim McGee sits on the foot of the King sized bed, HP Ipaq Writing computer in hand, working on the Dropbox linked 'The Other Locked Room' when the bedroom door to his right opens and Siobhan, wearing blue shorts and green tee shirt, steps in. "You're home."

He looks up, surprised at her surprise. "I'm home."

"I called when I came in, you didn't answer so I started dinner."

He looks at his watch, mildly surprised at what it announces. "What time was that?"

"About a half hour ago. It's almost ready."

"What is it?"

"Cold tuna and chicken salads with carrots, cherry tomatoes and celery. It is way too hot to cook," she declares.

Her appearance finally filters through to him. She's not wearing her Liturgical uniform of black skirt and light blue back button blouse with wraparound white collar yet she didn't come in here to change. "Where are your clothes?" The look she gives him makes him regret the question.

"I changed before I left. I was not going out in that heat."

He recalls she'd left some clothes in her former room in the Rectory, and if his brain were less broiled from the day out... "I don't blame you."

"What are you up to?" she asks, eyeing the small device in his hand.

"My neck in trouble."

x

"What have you done to that poor girl now?" she asks, flashing back to her private conversation with Samantha Sky in her office before she'd gone on to the Church. They hadn't discussed Timmy's book. Perhaps she doesn't know?

"Nothing. Well, aside from Sabrina Shore being arrested for murder, but Amy Sutton hired Shelly Jalmer's lawyer and Coven High Priestess to defend her."

"Isn't that kind of the way things really happened? Minus the pseudonyms, I mean."

"Yes. But I had to modify some things."

"I should expect so. Like what?"

"Well, since Amy and Sabrina are going to wind up living together when that case is over, I had to make some changes in their personalities."

"Like what?"

"Since I had to make Sabrina a more likely suspect, she couldn't be as nice as Sammy is. She's more aggressive, her relationship with Mavis SanAntonio is more confrontational and–"

"Wait. Karen Huston," she pronounces is 'Houston', "is now SanAntonio?"

"Yeah."

"Honey, what the heck are you doing?"

He's as surprised by her tone as her piercing stare. "What do you mean?"

"What do you mean what do I mean? You've written three marvelous books, superb examples of imagination and creativity, and even though you did include real people - thank you very much for not doing it this time," Princess Mairenn in 'Cearbhall's Quest' had been an unwelcome surprise, "you had marvelously original stories, two mysteries I didn't even see through until the last chapter, and now you..."

"Now they want the first full draft of 'The Other Locked Room' next week. Granted I had a _bit_ of time on the Pacific Princess to make some headway, but I've had two back-to-back cases and have to steal five minutes at a time just to rewrite history. When I signed for a third 'L.J. Tibbs novel I didn't foresee running out of time."

"Next week?"

"Next week. I could have really used that Suspension."

The day when being suspended is preferable to anything else... no wonder he's stressed. "Well, honey," she says, pulling the door, "all I can say is 'good luck'. I'll bring in your dinner and leave you alone for the evening, but I just hope Samantha and the others like your efforts."

"Thank you."


	13. Surprise

Chapter Thirteen  
Surprise

When Sammy Sky enters the shade (93 degrees vs. 96) of the apartment house and looks up the first of the long, torturous flights of steps, she wishes that four stories - well, three apartments - qualified for an elevator. She'd managed to get a Metro car without air conditioning, and at five two standing in a crowd of giants - naturally no one offered her a seat - meant no breeze at all, leaving her to strain scorching air through her cooking lungs. By the time she managed to force herself out onto the platform she felt more wilted than the flowers Bill gave her last week.

She's tempted to open her blouse, but even a bra had been too much once she'd changed back to blouse and shorts and stepped out of Autopsy; and the pubescent kid in the first apartment always hears her or Abby on the stairs to their middle floor apartment. Sometimes getting past feels like traversing a testosterone gauntlet.

It's too hot to boost herself up stairs that she'd run up two at a time a month ago, even the hand rail is too warm to grab, but eventually she does force herself to the third floor landing where she considers either fainting or simply liquefying into a puddle where she stands. Her wet blouse and shorts lend more weight - the weight of the virtually dripping fabric - to the puddle option.

She's not sure if they'd set the air conditioner timer before they'd left this morning. Considering their schedules, timing is more often miss than approach the target, but as she digs into her too moist hip pocket for her keys the door swings inward and a gorgeous draft hits her head on.

"I thought it was you," Abby says. She's wearing black baseball polo shirt and the black shorts she'd had made up for the 'Shirts vs. Skins' baseball game last year, the shorts with the outrageous palm prints on her butt cheeks, so she had turned the AC on when she got home.

Sammy can count the number of times the woman has come home first but the only thing she can drag into her brain is "Ocean. Iceberg! _Glacier_! PLEASE!"

"Come in here before you melt, Elphaba," her friend urges as she tugs her inside. The final fate of the Wicked Witch of the West is something the dripping young woman can appreciate. Then again, Elphaba had suffered that fate by having a bucket of water thrown onto her, which is something she won't refuse either.

When she's inside the gloriously cool living room Abby tells her as she propels her toward the bathroom in the short hall between living room and coffin room: "Get out of those things and have a proper bath before you catch your death of cold."

"Cold doesn't make you sick. It's the reduction of efficiency of disease fighting enzymes that are susceptible to lowered temperature that allow germs to get the upper–"

"Don't out-science the Scientist, Doctor," Abby reprimands her. "Date's coming and you're dripping all over the carpet."

"You have a date coming here?" she asks, doubting she could do much harm to the black shag.

"I may wear a funeral shroud and sleep in a coffin but I am very much alive."

"Do I know him?"

"Yes, you know him and if you don't get in and have a shower you are going to drive him away. Now get in there before your only other choice is the sprinkler at the Park."

"I'm going, I'm going." She'd like to stay to tease her but she can count on one hand the number of dates Abby has had lately and still have some digits left over.

The huge coffin room, nearly as large as the living room and kitchen before it, has the bathroom beyond it to her right. In the few steps beyond the coffin she unbuttons her wet blouse and peals the unpleasantly cooling material off. Stepping in, she puts the wet blouse through the under sink hamper's swinging door and decides to have a more relaxing bath rather than a shower. If company does come she can easily hide in the coffin room Abby uses as her bedroom without being seen. Both their dressers are there, as are their closets though she sleeps in the new convertible in the living room.

She stoppers the deep tub and turns the taps on full, then balances them to a comfortable temperature for soaking before finishing undressing. She'll close the wrap-around drape in case, which will also prevent an unexpected breeze from chilling her if she mistimes this so rare event in her friend's social life.

x

The warm water, neither scorching like the air outside nor cool enough to chill her, feels so utterly relaxing that after a time she catches herself on the verge of dozing. If not for Special Agent Gibbs' demanding expectations - and she does grant he's feeling pressure from the Director, from SECNAV and God knows who else to produce results on this frigid case by a week ago Tuesday, but still...

No, she's home, she's in the tub with soothing scented oils in warm (not hot) deep water up to her chin and it's been... how long has it been? Long enough for her body to feel very good and for the kinks to vanish. She moves the curtain aside with her toes far enough to see the faux cuckoo clock on the wall beside the door and decides that maybe it's been too long. Abby has a date and there's a line between indulgence and selfishness and perhaps she's crossed it?

She carefully pulls herself out of the water to stand up, carefully balancing, the water almost up to her knees. The oils have made everything but the plastic bubble mat under her slippery. Unstoppering the tub, she turns on the shower. She hadn't been able to shampoo but with her pixie hairstyle this'll take less than five minutes.

x

After the shower she pushes the water from her body, comfortable in how the oils have softened her skin, pulls the curtain aside, has to step up to put one foot onto the small carpet and reaches for the empty towel rack.

'Oh, come on.' She steps fully out, looks about the small room. Nothing folded on the shelves over the john, nothing anywhere. "Abby?"

No answer. 'You've gotta be kidding me.' "Abby, where are the towels?" Still no answer. "Abby?" she calls louder. 'Did he come and they went out?' "ABBY."

'Fine. Okay, they're going to be washed anyway.' She pushes open the swinging door under the sink, reaches for the first material she can fi–

Her hand touches nothing and she peers inside. The hamper had been half full, now it's as bare as she is. "ABBY, ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME?" No answer. 'I am going to hurt that woman.'

x

Okay, her dresser is right in the next room, it's not like she can't go naked into the coffin room to get what she wants, but she doesn't want to go dripping into the room. With the way her luck has gone today, the coffin won't be empty. So to shout for help or not to shout?

About the only useful item left in the room is the electric blow drier, which she needs for her hair anyway. Carefully regulating it between hot, warm and cool - the thing is made for hair and not for sensitive bare skin and most especially not for _really_ sensitive bare skin – but by frequently changing the temperature she manages to dry herself.

She stows the dryer, opens the door and Abby is standing on the other side of it, her lips pulled in a devilish smirk. "Abby, what the hell? Didn't you hear me calling you?"

"Sure, I did. I've been standing here the whole time waiting. Who has a bath _and_ a shower?"

"Someone who wants nice hair." She's too annoyed to care that she's standing naked in front of her roommate. Squeamishness has faded years ago with anonymous partners of both sexes at 'Sodom and Gomorrah' and 'Taiwan On' even discounting a thoroughly enjoyed lifestyle of bi-sexual sex, but in the months they've lived together neither of them had been naked in front of the other. It breaks their Living Agreement in half.

"I have a surprise for you," Abby announces.

"I've had one, thanks."

"Put your hands out like this," she directs, extending her own hands and cupping both as though holding a baseball.

x

Unable to fathom her scheme, Sammy complies. "Further out." She extends her arms all the way, hands now outside the room and still holding the phantom baseball. "Now close your eyes and keep them closed."

"Abby..." She'd much rather put on underwear. She doesn't mind nudity, but since Day One they've had understandings.

"Close your eyes and keep them closed."

"Oh all _right."_ As a surprise this isn't much fun.

She waits, wondering what's going to land in her cupped hands until something clenches her wrists tightly and her eyes fly open to see Abby swiftly wrap a doubled rope of scarlet silk a half dozen turns about her wrists. The force has pulled her cupped hands together and her wrists press hard.

Before she can pull back Abby runs the long rope between her hands, cinches the grip tighter on the radiocarpal joint of each hand and knots it with the long end on the forearm side, leaving over two feet on each of two ropes. Though Sammy's circulation isn't cut and she can spread her elbows, her wrists are tied so firmly she can't bring her hands together.

x

To Sammy, who in the first seconds had been frightened, this is a thoroughly familiar situation - though not with this partner. Naked, tied, helpless to 'defend' herself against someone who doesn't want to hurt her, this is something she's experienced hundreds of times, though never with Abby, and she feels a thrill flash through her bare body.

"If you wanted me helpless," she says with a smile she hopes conveys all her lustful pleasure and anticipation for an evening they've denied for so long, "you only had to say so."

"Don't fight me," the tall woman commands.

"No, Mistress," she says, her voice soft. "You can do anything you want to me."

x

Abby, whose eyes reflect surprise at her slipping so immediately into the Submissive manner, pulls the scarlet silk upward, Sammy's arms pulled high. The eight inches between their heights create a major difference. Abby doesn't have to reach for Sammy's trapped wrists to be pinned high, her hands cupped to the ceiling. "Who am I?"

"You're my Mistress, Ma'am," she admits, her voice very soft and quiet. Just saying it, just admitting it, sends such a hot thrill through her and she feels herself grow moist.

"Then who are you?"

"I'm what you want me to be, Ma'am," she promises.

"What?"

"Your Sub, your bottom, your play girl, your obedient property, your bitch; tell me what you want me to be." Her voice is hushed, her breath heated and her body growing hotter by the moment as she gives over to the familiar and the long anticipated. She can feel her nipples giving her arousal away and presses her legs together, the thrill in her labia driving a quiver through her body. "You control me. Tell me how to please you, how to make you happy. You've never had a woman service you, but I _know_ how to please a woman. I'll do anything you say."

Abby runs her fingernails very gently down Sammy's left breast and the sensation flies down to her toes, nearly makes her hair tingle. Her breath quickens, her breasts rising and falling faster, more heavily under her nails. She wishes Abby would give a squeeze, with or without nails as she chooses, but it's not a Sub's place to ask.

"You're getting excited."

"Very excited, Ma'am," she can't speak aloud, the heat in her coming out in a passionate sigh.

Abby runs her fingernail over Sammy's erect right nipple, already sensitive as proven by her hot gasp. "Are you starting to get wet?"

She makes herself look up into her Mistress' eyes, tries to convey everything with that look. "Yes, Ma'am. _Very_ wet."

Abby smiles down to her. "This is going to be easier than I thought." She lowers her hand, lets Sammy's bound wrists down and tugs the rope for her to follow.

x

Sammy, though hugely surprised because months ago, when they'd agreed to share the apartment, Abby had made her position absolutely clear: there would be NO sexual nor Dominant / Submissive relations between them. Abby is Straight, and though not narrow her friend wants nothing of the lifestyle that she enjoys. The Scientist had made it clear that she's free to pursue her own pleasures and inclinations - elsewhere - and she's accompanied her to Social evenings at LGBT gatherings, but neither of them is to bring a date home without warning the other to make alternate plans. They have a free and open understanding, but she has never involved Abby - would never involve her - in any BDSM Scene or any sexual contact whatsoever.

That's one of their first Living Agreements.

When she's pulled by the scarlet rope past the coffin room (so that device won't be part of tonight's kinkiness - too bad) into the living room and sees the long coffee table covered with the missing towels and a towel wrapped pillow strategically placed two thirds of the way down the wooden table, she feels the moisture grow to a near boil between her lip and realizes that their agreement has been blasted into a billion pieces.

Though action had been long ago forbidden, she hadn't been forbidden her fantasies. Many of them had been volcanic and they'd curl Abby's hair if she knew.

And now she feels the flare explode deep within her because, at her Mistress' command, a fantasy is _finally_ going to come true!

x

Standing before the prepared table, which she notes the right end has been pulled away from the black convertible, almost pointing to the door, she tries to speak aloud but years of submission still hushes her voice and she stares downward, not daring to meet her Mistress' eyes. "May your Sub ask a question?"

Abby considers for a moment. "Yes."

"Why did you change your mind?"

After a long moment of silence, Sammy forces herself to look up.

"I said you could ask."

She looks back hurriedly to the black carpet. "Yes, Ma'am."

But every time she addresses her friend as 'Ma'am' or 'Mistress' she feels it in the way her breasts tingle in anticipation of Abby's touch and the way everything from her ovaries to her labia jump to increasingly greater thrills.

She squeezes her legs together and can't quiet the sharp exclamation that breaks through.

x

Using the rope that holds her wrists firmly to give directions, Abby makes her turn her back to the table, spread her legs to either side of it and sit down upon the pillow, then lay back onto the towel covered wood, knees off the end. Abby signals her and she raises her hips so her friend and new Mistress can position the pillow properly. It's the extra firm one she uses to support her back when she rehearses on the couch, so it raises her quite high, emphasizing her vulnerability.

Her head reaches the table's end, the other end just an inch beyond her knees so she can lie upon it with her feet on the floor, her knees on either side. Abby uses the rope to raise her hands over her head and makes her reach down, the edge at the bends of her elbows, her full breasts pulled high as though on display. Taking one rope to each of the wooden feet below a shelf, Abby ties the ropes firmly so her trapped hands reach down, pinned quite securely.

She's gasping and doesn't try to control her breath, her breasts rising and falling and Abby trails her fingernails over her heaving mounds, teases her hard nipples.

"Really getting excited now, aren't you?"

" _Yes_ , Mistress," she gasps, every sensuous sensation tearing at her body. "I'm so excited I could explode right _now."_

"You may not. I forbid it."

"Yes, Ma'am," she says, having to bite her lips to distract herself. Forbidden an orgasm, she can only obey. Rather, she can try to, but much more of this, or else the right touch and...

"I've got a lot of surprises for you. I'll tell you when I'm ready."

"Yes, Mistress."

x

Abby straightens and goes to the couch, comes back with three scarlet silk cords, one over twelve feet long and the other two two feet long. At a press at her knees, Sammy spreads her legs wide, her knees now far beyond either side.

"I didn't know you shaved." It had been apparent from the moment the door had opened but Abby had waited until now to mention it. After the unveiling?

"It makes me more sensitive, Mistress. I do it ever since one time someone tricked me."

"How could someone trick _you_?" she asks, sensing a good story.

"He had me tied on a bondage table, one of the padded leather ones with rings along all the sides for ropes. He tied my knees wide apart, feet drawn back up so my ankles were bound through the rings too, elbows and wrists also roped through the rings. He had me lashed down so thoroughly I couldn't move."

"Sounds like just your fun," she decides, but Sammy's not smiling with the memory of a really erotic night.

"And then he started pulling my pubic hairs out with a pair of pair of needle nose pliers."

x

The smile falls off Abby's face. "God."

"I gave him 'Yellow' after the second hair - it hurt like a bitch - but he didn't ease up. I gave him 'Red' and screamed when he pulled out one right by my clit. He clamped his hand over my mouth and kept at me. He kept pulling them very, very slowly so it really _hurt_ until each finally came out and he moved to the next one. I was screeching 'RED' into his hand and he shoved a ball gag into my mouth, tied it too tight and spent more than three more hours pulling all my hairs out one by one while I screamed my head off and no one could hear me. "

" _Bastard_!"

"He didn't even untie me. When he was done he left and one of the staff came in to check the room for the next member and found me. I complained and got him expelled, banned from both Clubs. After that, it was self defense, so no one could ever do it to me again."

Abby pats her breast. "You're not going to be hurt by me."

"I know, Mistress. I like a _bit_ of pain; suspension, nipple pinching, nibbling, breast slapping if I like the Dom or Domme, spanking when it's mingled with petting. I like to be dominated, to surrender to a Master or Mistress, but not _that_ kind of pain."

"Not sexy at all."

"No, Mistress. He didn't care about me; he only wanted to hurt a woman as badly as he could, and he dragged it out for hours. I could breathe but the ball gag filled my mouth and no one could hear me screaming my head off."

She strokes her cheek. " _This_ will be something you'll enjoy."

x

Abby takes the long red rope and ties one end snugly around her upper thigh, being careful not to hinder circulation. Her friend and new Mistress tosses the other end under, goes around to collect it and pulls steadily and firmly until she's spread wide, all the way off the edges of the table, then Abby wraps it about her other thigh. The result is that, though the table isn't especially wide, her legs are spread much more than if her knees were trapped. The pillow under her displays her to full effect. She's been tied more tightly and thoroughly before, but that this is Abby adds tantalizing spice.

More than tantalizing spice; she feels like she's boiling between her widely spread legs and every thought that it's Abby that she's submitting to increases the temperature to where her friend must be burnt by any touch.

The rest of the rope then secures her ankles to the feet of the table. She's helpless, utterly vulnerable, totally at Abby's mercy.

She's jumping about in her skin, her nerves on fire, panting so hard her breasts rise and fall like there's an earthquake inside her chest, so excited that if Abby breathes on her wrong she'll climax regardless of her friend's order. She wishes her Mistress hadn't forbidden her; even a little orgasm would feel great - but she must obey.

But there's nothing that says she can't beg. Looking up, she sees Abby with the two shorter red cords. "Please, Mistress, please!"

"Please, what?"

"A little O-G. _Please."_

"You're not going to have a little orgasm. You're going to have a Supernova. Just wait."

"Yes, Mistress." The frustration tears at her. She'd hoped for at least mercy if not fulfillment, but her friend is relentless - or merciless - and she's given her total control.

She stares at the two foot long scarlet ropes Abby brandishes. "What are you going to do with those?"

"That's a surprise."

x

Abby drops one scarlet cord on her stomach, holds the other by the ends and puts the middle under her left breast, brings the rope up and around, encircles her breast and traps the firm and heaving mound. Abby pulls firmly, tightens the cord one cross above and then one below before she brings it back up and ties it above, tight but not painfully tight. She's as endowed as her new Mistress is but the difference in height always makes her look bigger, so even with her arms restrained she's a perfect size for the rope. Sammy groans as new lusts burst through her. Abby pulls firmly, doesn't hurt her but her breast is squeezed extra full when Abby finishes with an ornate bow at the top.

Sammy gasps hard but she can barely fill her lungs.

"Does it hurt?" her captor asks.

She has to fight through the thrill. "No, Mistress. It feels... Oh God!"

She's not ready when Abby ties her right breast as firmly, both breasts now high, full and triple firm. Abby runs her fingers along them and it feels like her breasts are having orgasms on their own.

"You okay?"

It takes several seconds for Sammy to adjust to the maddening sensations that flare under her skin. "Yes," she finally gasps. "I feel great." Her vagina throbs to the pounding of her heart. "Thank you, Mistress."

"Can you move?"

She tries a wiggle, pulls at the ropes binding her wrists and legs. "No, Mistress."

Abby smiles. "You're helpless?"

"Yes, Mistress. Completely. I'm yours. You can do anything you want to me." The words fly though her, lightning stabs her breasts and vagina. "I'm yours," she says in a long, grateful sigh.

x

Abby bends down until her face is very close and her voice is firm. "Good, because I'm planning a very special night, so when I give you an Order I want your absolute obedience. I'm only going to say this once so I want to be sure you understand completely. Do you?"

"Yes, Mistress," she whispers, voice stolen by lust. "I'll obey every order you give me." Just saying those words makes her vagina clench.

"Good." She pats her cheek and stands up. "Don't go away."

Despite herself, Sammy can't help but giggle. But Abby walks to the kitchen behind her and Sammy must tilt her head up to see her upside down. "What's going on?"

"A surprise birthday party."

"Birthday Party? My birthday's the end of _next_ _month_."

x

Abby ignores her and walks out of the room. Sammy tugs at the ropes, but like the ones that squeeze her breasts into high, triple firm mounds they're very secure. She looks up high as Abby - again upside down - comes in from the kitchen with a small white ceramic bowl and a can of Reddi-Wip and steps around to stand above her.

"Abby, what are you doing?" she asks when she can see her again without the strain.

"I told you. Getting ready for a birthday party."

The words are innocent, her expression is innocent, but something about the scene makes it not at all innocent. "Abby, remember you told me how Tim hit his head and acted totally weird? Did you hit your head?"

"No," she says, putting the equipment on the floor and kneeling beside her.

"Then what are you doing? It's not your birthday, it's not my birthday."

"Date's not here yet."

"Wait! There _is_ a date?" She'd decided it had been only a ruse to get her prepped for this Scene.

"Uh huh. And it's going to be one heck of a party."

"Wait! You invited someone here? In the _middle_ of a Scene?"

"Don't be silly. I invited him hours ago."

"That's _Against_ the RULES!"

"Don't worry, you'll like him. He's the birthday guest, I'm the hostess."

"Well what am I? The sacrificial virgin? I'm not a virgin!"

"Not to worry. You'll survive this."

x

Unable to process the massive betrayal, she further can't believe when Abby pops the top off the can of Reddi-Wip, shakes it with her right hand while with her left she reaches for and gently spreads her moist labia. "Abby, what are you–?" her friend brings the upside down can to her pillow raised crotch, spreads her lips wider. "Abby, you are _not_ going t GEEZ THAT'S _COLD_!" drowns out the drawing of a long line up her labia to her clitoris, and though she struggles she can't prevent Abby from pressing the nozzle to her clitoris. It's like she put the fire out in her cat. She bites her lips to withhold a scream as her captor creates a star-like pattern, then a flower top.

"DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW _COLD_ THAT IS?"

"Well, I wanted to make sure the flower kept its shape so this morning I stuck the can in the freezer." She brings the nozzle back again. "Wait. Have to fix the stem." She gently respreads her labia.

"Be-YAAAAAATCH!"

x

Abby brings the can up to her left nipple, still firm and tall from the pressure on her breasts and the intimate manipulation. She puts the nozzle to the tip of her nipple and lightly presses the side. Sammy's scream drowns out the fizz of the cream as the nozzle spreads a near frozen star out from her nipple and she screams again as a flower head is drawn upon the star.

"You're out of your _BIRD_!" she cries as Abby attacks her right breast, drawing another spread star topped with a flower.

As Abby positions the nozzle beside the right flower and draws a long spiral down and about her breast, the frigid curls icing her cooked flesh she cries "WHAT THE HELL DATE DO YOU HAVE?"

Abby puts the device at her left nipple now and redraws the spiral about and about out and down her breast as Sammy screams. The nearly frozen cream makes her long to be back outside.

When the scream fades and Sammy lies gasping, the cream that pinwheels each breast gradually becoming tolerable, Abby gives her a saucy smile. "I never said he was _my_ date. He's yours."

x

Sammy feels the world flip over as she looks up into Abby's eyes and understands her friend's scheme. "Oh my God!" She struggles at the ropes. "OhMyGodOhMyGodOHMYGOD! ABBY LET ME LOOSE! GOD ABBY LET ME LOOSE! _GOD PLEASE LET ME LOOOOOSE_!"

"Calm Down and Shut Up."

x

Whether it's years of submissive obedience while tied up or some lingering trust in her friend, Sammy doesn't calm down but she does shut up.

"Now I'm your Mistress so you have to listen to me."

She can barely hear her over her pounding heart but "You are _not_ my _Mistress_! A Mistress doesn't betray and remain a Mistress – ever!"

"Good enough. But I am your friend. I know you and this is what you are." She glances at her decorated breasts. "Well, maybe not the whipped cream but you've kept no secrets from him, but neither have you been yourself. You said you'll only do Vanilla sex with him because you weren't sure how he would react to the real thing so you decided not to try.

"But I know you. For you Vanilla isn't a lifestyle, it's a vacation. And we've both seen a couple melt down because they kept things from each other - and they're more than just dating for a few weeks."

x

As Abby reaches into the white ceramic bowl at her knees Sammy's still not happy. "So you decided _all on your own_ to do this."

Abby starts to put rings of sliced strawberries between the spirals of cream on her right breast. "You can thank me later."

"I'll more likely dent a fire extinguisher on your head!"

"Then it's a good thing you're tied up," she quips, continuing to decorate, dealing the tall thin slices about each full mound like sexy cards.

"What the _hell_ is with this?" she demands, looking down at her high, decorated breasts. The strawberries are almost as cold as the whipped cream but she's too mad to care.

"You said his favorite desert is strawberry shortcake."

"So?"

"You're the shortcake."

"Very punny."

x

A knock at the door makes Sammy's face go as white as the whipped cream as Abby takes a cherry from the bowl and sets it in the cream flower petal that decorates her labia. She looks down between her high and decorated breasts past her pillow raised hips to the door and realizes this cherry topped flower between her wide spread legs is the first thing Bill is going to see.

"Abby, no! _Please._ I'll BE your Sub, I'll do everything you want." Abby leaves her, heads to the door. "I'll be your Slave forever! I beg you! Please don't do this! I'm begging you! Abby I'm _begging_ you! I'll–"

She pulls it open. Bill is on the other side, dressed for a date. "Hi. Come on in."

He does, gets a foot into the room and freezes.

"Happy Birthday, Bill," Abby says to the stunned man.

"His birthday is in TWO WEEKS!" Sammy cries, her red face as much blush as outrage.

"That's what makes it such a Surprise Party. Now Bill," she tells the stunned man, "I know you're surprised but I also know you discussed this ad infinitum but that was discussion. I now introduce you to the _real_ Samantha Sky. Sammy, I've got a ton of work at the Lab to catch up on eleven cases so I'm going to spend the night there. I'll see you in the morning. And if I don't... well, I'll know you're tied up."

xxx

Debbie Devlin stands in the middle of the vacant basement room, trembling, naked. The thick pads that line walls, floor, even the ceiling, not only prevent sound from penetrating but will prevent broken bones. Her arms are pulled so far behind her that her elbows touch and the leather strands bite into her flesh and force her chest forward for whatever pain he wants to inflict. She's thoroughly bruised from upper chest to thighs, never where anyone can see, though she must be careful when she dresses. Her breasts, dark with fresh bruises in some spots and healing in others, are thrust outward, so swollen she hasn't been able to wear a bra in longer than she wants to remember.

Wherever she isn't bruised the welts from whips across her torso and thighs remain even when the livid wounds fade. Pain is her constant companion, yet the perforated red ball gag that holds her mouth too widely open, that's tied behind her head under her hair, doesn't allow her to express it other than in moans, crying and screams.

He opens the padded door and she wants to back away, but there's no place to go. He presses the door closed and, to re-enforce her helplessness, he moves the hasp into place, threads the padlock through the ring and pushes it closed. Now, even if she could get her arms free, the pressure of the thin strap on her touching elbows enough to make her cry, she has no hope other than if he were to have mercy.

He strides across the padded floor and in his eyes she sees her fate.

His right fist slams into her left breast and she screams into the red ball, staggers backward but she doesn't have time to finish the scream before her right breast explodes in agony.

Debbie staggers back further and tries to breathe, but the excruciating pain steals her air. Legs braced apart on the padded floor, she fights for balance, her smashed breasts two centers of mind tearing agony. She senses more than sees his fast approach. The boot that rises fast to slam between her legs launches her bare feet six inches from the floor a moment before she crashes.


	14. I Am Going To Kill You

Chapter Fourteen  
I Am Going To Kill You

"Really hit by the grouchy stick, weren't you Ziva?"

"I was not hit by any stick, Tony," the woman counters as she goes around her desk, "and if I had been I assure you I would have hit back." However, she has to grant that throwing her backpack behind her chair is not the sign of someone having an excellent morning. It's not just the power shirt plastered to her torso announcing to one and all that it is far too hot for a bra, or that pulling her hair back into a pony tail offered absolutely no help. Come to think of it, it is all of those things - and more.

"What's wrong," Tim asks solicitously. It's rare for the woman to be late, rarer for her to break upon the bullpen with a tsunami of anger. He's annoyed too, doesn't like to be split up from his wife while she's at the Altar and he's here at his desk so there's no weekend together but there's no help for it. At least he'd had the Sacrament from a reserved Host from her Home Visit Pyx before leaving home but for the rest of it he's quite put out by whoever did in Annette Saunders, but by no means does he approach the depth of Ziva's ire.

"I had to take the Metro in today," Ziva declares, "because my car would not start and I had to take a cab to the Metro station and then there was no seat available. It is Sunday service so they run trains only occasionally, so of course it was crowded worse than in rush hour so I had to stand the entire way. And there was no air conditioning to be had." She plops down into her chair, which helps the frustration and aggravation not at all. Forty five minutes late on a day when Gibbs has spent twenty one years on a case; she is going to hear about this as soon as he walks in.

"Why didn't you call?" Tony asks. "I would have picked you up."

"My cell phone was dead," she growls, pulling the wire from her drawer and plugging the unit in. Thank God it is a fast charge. "And as the final aggravation, not that I needed one, a man, seated right in front of me, was doing his man spread and blocking the seat next to him."

"Why didn't you just move him, Zee-váh?"

"I was tempted to, Toe-knee, but I did not wish to put him in the hospital because I was in a foul mood." A weekend without progress or even the prospect of progress doesn't help.

"I hate that too," Michelle says, trying to show with her tone that she commiserates with the other woman. "Two weeks ago I was on the bus and this guy next to me, well I had my legs crossed so it was essentially just one leg and still I was squished."

"I do not mind 20 degrees or even 30, but when it passes 60 I start to get aggravated. Why can men not be like women and sit properly in public?"

"Well," Tony says, "we have something in the way."

Michelle turns to him. "It's in our way too sometimes," she bites, but doesn't finish quite in time before Gibbs and Dwayne Cassius Pride arrive with the latter's team.

"What's in your way?" Gibbs asks.

"Err ahh ummm, Jimmy's bicycle. He keeps it in the bedroom right in front of my closet."

"I didn't know the Gremlin has a bike," Tony says, determined to enjoy tripping the woman up. "There was none when we checked out your bedroom when Alan Stephens exploded in it."

"Er, nahh, never mind."

"Right, we've got work to do," Gibbs declares.

The enhanced team had been widely separated for the past two days, so this morning's recap is intended to make certain everyone has the full compiled information.

"Ducky and his team," DiNozzo tells his boss, "which will soon be bigger than SSA Pride's–"

"Not in the Budget. She goes back after this case."

"have concluded that death by defibrillator is the most likely cause, but whether someone was interrogating her or torturing her it comes down to the same thing. Captain Gage from the Aventine Ambulance Service confirms what Ducky says. As an Interrogation method it's totally useless. The thing would only fire when fully charged and a one thousand volt or four hundred Joule burst, no matter what scale you prefer, would stop a normally beating heart if the charge ran through it. You then need CPR or Meds to get the heart started again, with no guarantee that you could.

"Now granted she was shocked all over her torso from collar to diaphragm and down both sides but I doubt she'd've been in any condition to answer questions after each jolt."

x

Gibbs sees Tim's nod of confirmation at this and is well aware that the man's in an excellent position to concur. Last year he'd been held for several days and his interrogators' weapon of choice had been a cattle prod. He still hasn't fully healed from some of the more severe marks and keeps breaking Plastic Surgery appointments.

"We feel that torture is the most likely purpose of the burns," Meredith Brody says, "but as has been said it's overkill for torture. It doesn't make any sense. Plus, as a Physician's Assistant working in Norfolk she had no access to Secrets, and if it was information on a Patient there are far more efficient methods of obtaining information."

"Furthermore," Ziva declares, "high ranking officers are less likely to use a Clinic, so who might she be interrogated about?"

"The shape of the burns," Michelle says, "indicates that the gel that is normally used on defibrillator paddles was not used. Jimmy says that without it the process is too inefficient. Had it been used, the marks would have adopted the shape of the paddles, yet in the majority of cases there would not have been burns at all."

"Consensus has it," DiNozzo brings it home, "that if she had been tortured twenty or more times her heart would have stopped several times, and whoever did it would have to use CPR, maybe combined with adrenaline or other drugs, to bring her back each time. Ducky and company found nothing under the skin that hints that this was done, but he's only eighty percent sure, since not much time expired between the efforts and final death, and the drying out changes colors and lots of other things."

DiNozzo has control of the plasma remote though the image already under scrutiny is an interior shot of the secret room in which Lt. Annette Saunders had spent the past two decades. The woman lies supine, her mummified body coated with a layer of dust, she still wearing most of her white Naval uniform. The only things that give color are the epaulets, crossed tie, the lines of colorful medals on her jacket and her gold belt buckle. Her white jacket lays with one arm across her legs, the rest on the floor beside her and her white shoes are scattered, one midway along the right wall, the other near the back corner as though they'd been thrown in with her and the jacket. Her shriveled feet, found after stripping to be as dark as the rest of her skin from the exclusion of all moisture and drawn tight about the bones, are loosely enclosed within the sagging white socks she had been wearing.

x

At a push of the button linked to Ziva's computer the image on her screen is enlarged upon the plasma. It's the outer front of the Aventine Ambulance, surreptitiously taken on the first visit, showing the open bay door and the staff working on various parts of the white vehicle.

"Lieutenant Saunders had not been seen since four days prior to her disappearance," Ziva recaps, "as she was not scheduled to serve until three days subsequent. In the twenty one years since she was reported AWOL, eleven of the staff have retired or moved on. Two are since deceased. I am still compiling the current locations of the remaining nine. There have been three commanding officers of the Service since the year she joined. She served all of her seven years there under Captain Nathaniel Dahl, one of the deceased though he died fourteen years ago. He was succeeded by Captain Ronald Stringer while Captain John Gage, a retired California Fire Department Battalion Chief and one of the first LA Fire Fighter Paramedics back in the 1960's, took over four years ago and therefore never met her."

"He confirmed," LaSalle picks up, "that while it would have been very unusual for a member of the Ambulance Service to have her own personal defibrillator and any number of other medical supplies and devices, it would not have been forbidden."

"According to the brother, Paul," Pride says, "Lieutenant Saunders had a whole closet of things that were off limits to him. No clue as to what they were but at some unknown time after she went missing the closet was emptied out."

Gibbs declares that "The only ones who knew what was in it are dead. How are we on suspects?"

x

DiNozzo, still in command of the remote, sets it to pull from his own screen. It displays a Virginia Driver's License for Jerome Devlin, then photographed at age 43, now 46. Saunders would be 43 today had she not been walled up in her home.

"He was our best suspect," Pride declares, "and I hated to let him go. He had a bad attitude and a short temper back then. The case was a Missing Person one and while we did a full workup on him, his car, his apartment house from basement to roof; we never found anything."

"Now we have neighbors telling us he beats his wife," Gibbs says, his tone saying the too obvious but Michelle puts it into words.

"What he is allegedly doing today may have no bearing on this case. He and his wife both deny anything is happening and we have insufficient Probable Cause to get a Warrant. Jimmy also says that though Saunders had that fractured and healed rib, Radius and the dislocated shoulder he can't find any evidence that she was abused."

"According to her diary she wasn't," Meredith Brody reports to the agents who'd been on the road during the Psychological Autopsy. "She didn't assign any blame for her shoulder injury, her arm or her rib to him. In fact, she gave no clue at all about what caused the injuries."

"What does your Profiling class tell you about that?" She'd claimed to learn more from Ducky in an afternoon than from her Professor over the past several weeks. He has no doubt that the man had maintained an ongoing lecture throughout the search for details.

"That she was withholding the details." Her shrug admits the obvious. "I'm not saying he did it or didn't do it, I'm saying she didn't want anyone to know how it happened. In fact, she seems not to have wanted anyone to know that it _had_ happened."

"Meredith, Michelle and I tried to meet with Debbie Devlin yesterday evening," Ziva says. "She is in considerable pain but she denies she is being abused. It is a common situation among victims of domestic violence, but if she will not speak out there is nothing we can legally do." She pauses to get Michelle's nod of confirmation. It helps to have a Lawyer on the team, for American Law is not the same as Israeli, and Mossad methods of gaining confirmation are more direct than NCIS - or most Federal Agencies - are willing to use. "And even if we can prove she is being abused we cannot act on suspicion that her husband hurt Annette Saunders without at least some measure of evidence. And even if we could, Ducky's autopsy cannot prove she had been assaulted other than with the alleged shocks that killed her." That punching bag downstairs in the gym grows more appealing even after last night's thorough workout.

x

DiNozzo touches the control again. "Paul Saunders, unmarried, not dating, is the final living member of the family, but he was nine way back then with a nine year old's perception of what was going on. As he said, his life revolved around school, play, television and his friends, and his parents sent him to his room any time Investigators came."

"What about the family?" Gibbs asks.

"If anyone was in a position to know about the secret room," McGee points out, "it would have been them."

"McGee, when was that room put in and why was it closed off?"

"I'll find out."

As he and Pride leave, Gibbs' hand comes up quickly behind DiNozzo's head.

"OW! Thank you, boss. But what was that for?"

"Just manspreading it around. Come on, you're with us." But as Tony follows, he doesn't like the way Michelle and Ziva smirk at him.

xx

In the Forensics Lab Abby is coming into her ninth hour of work, Ruby Rae is across the room with the Gas Chromatograph while 'Psyko Babes' keeps them company, but she doesn't hear her visitor until the woman declares into her left ear "I am going to _kill_ you."

She whirls to the petite blonde looking up to her. Sammy's already wearing blue scrubs and her outlandish cross tied pink ballet slippers. "Oh _Hiiiii_ , Sammy. How was your night?"

"And why do you want to kill her?" Ruby asks.

Sammy holds a plastic Evidence box containing vials of blood and Petri dishes with other specimens in her hands. "You _know_ how my night was," she says. "It's why I'm going to kill you."

"Did Bill have a good time?" Abby asks, looking forward to a blow by thrust description of the main event.

"Don't play coy with me."

"I hope you didn't spend the whole night on the table." She's not sure the coffee table could take the abuse.

 _"No,_ I did _not_ spend the whole night on the table. After he finished with the strawberries and cream, and the flower and cherry – and another hour – we moved to the sofa-bed. BTW, _you're_ doing the laundry this week."

"At least I don't have to buy a new one after you broke the legs off."

"Okay," Ruby says from near the Ballistics Lab door, "I don't normally break in on private conversations, but this really deserves a 'Huh'?"

Sammy turns to her. "Last evening she got me out of a bath, tied me up - naked and spread out like a welcome home present - decorated me with whipped cream and strawberries and left me as a birthday cake for my boyfriend."

Ruby's eyes had been slowly widening at this rendition, and her mouth falling open. Finally she manages to tell the women that "We don't do those things in Edenvale."

Abby presses the remote control and Psyko Babes increases to mask the conversation. The Lab is security monitored from above, and she can't be completely sure of everything in the building. Some Agents can get nosy, and this is becoming a really private conversation.

Sammy turns on her room mate. "If you _ever_ –" But she's blasted by an explosive guitar strum and has to cover her ears. "Oh, My _GOD_ ," can barely make it through.

"You do seem more relaxed than you were last evening," Abby calls before Sammy can recover. She's more experienced at projecting when she wants to be heard.

" _Relaxed_? I can't _walk_ straight! But that's not why I'm sending you down to Ducky. How _dare_ you do that to me? To say nothing of _what_ you did, you took it on _yourself_ to do what I expressly told you I didn't want anyone to do! I _told_ you I wanted to _wait,_ perhaps not ever bring it up at all!"

"You're welcome."

She shakes her head, projecting her issue to Ruby. "I'm gonna kill her. I swear I'm gonna kill her before the night's over."

"So, how did Bill take it?" Abby calls, ignoring the threat.

"He took _Me,_ until after midnight!" But she can't keep up the faux severe tone any more than she can the mask that would hide her feelings. The tone and expression morph into a grin that's as much satisfaction as pleasure. "It was incredible, though _you_ amazed the hell out of me. It was like you were a completely different person."

"It's fun sometimes to play," she declares, hoping she won't lose her voice before this conversation is over. Maybe she should turn the volume back down?

Naaaaah.

"That was _not_ play," Sammy shouts into the din.

"Sure it was."

" _Don't_ do it again!"

"It was a game. It has rules. So how _did_ Bill take it?"

With a glance to Ruby, allowing her into the admission, she presses the junction of her scrubs. "I'm gonna need a _week._ "

But her grin says she doesn't mind at all.

x

Psyko Babes rocks off the walls from the radio on the shelf by the door at the very moment that Sammy sees that rear door open and Gibbs leads Pride and DiNozzo into the Lab. Rather he tries, for at that moment an especially stunning electric guitar chord makes him cringe, duck and he comes back up in time before the next shattering note to twist the dial on the device. The silence makes the six people slightly uncertain whom, if any, has gone deaf this time.

" _You are going to deafen yourself some day_ ," Gibbs declares loudly, though perhaps not from the lingering assault upon his hearing. Ruby looks to him in deep gratitude.

"Come on, Gibbs," Abby says in normal volume, "it's just our woofers and tweeters."

"We don't have tweeters," Sammy counters with a leading smile, including Ruby Rae across the room in her deviltry. "We have woofers."

She grins when she reads on Tony's face that whatever he wants to say is trapped behind his teeth because the two senior agents stand before him, but Gibbs notices her interest and turns to the man.

"You got a problem, DiNozzo?"

"No, Boss," he says too fast. He should have learned his lesson about the balls.

x

"What're you doing here?" Gibbs asks Sky instead.

"I was bringing Absie some samples."

He thinks that she chose this because he doesn't like her new, or at least recent, references to him as 'Gibbsie', but the blood and other body samples that line the small plastic box before her are too moist by far.

"They're from Agent Higgins' case."

"Fine. Goodbye."

He thinks Sammy is in too good a mood – when is she not? – to let the curt dismissal hurt. For a moment she looks as though she'd blow him a kiss but evidently - and prudently - realizess that'll be pressing her luck too far, so with a small shrug to Abby she hands her the Evidence box, turns and departs.

x

"What are you doing?" he challenges Abby about the not dry specimens.

"Gibbs, you know perfectly well Ruby and I are jiggling–" she directs an evil smile to Tony, "about a dozen cases."

"Concentrate on the important one first," he commands, taking the box from her and passing it to Ruby.

"Don't I always?" Deciding to have mercy, she leads the three men to her Evidence table where a half dozen Petri dishes contain specimens as dry as the others are moist. "There honestly isn't much more I can tell you. Lieutenant Saunders' tox screen, once I hydrated her sample not at all sufficiently but I know how you like answers a week ago Tuesday, revealed no drugs, poisons, contaminants; it's just really, really dry skin."

Dry is one thing, but they still don't have the advantage they'd had when Charles Bright's smoked body had been found in a chimney in Puller High School, Quantico. There the conditions of the body had been similar to Saunders' other than in years and degree, but Ducky had found 5 stab wounds he'd identified as being from something like a Phillips screwdriver or an ice pick, though the wounds had closed down to the diameter of pinpricks.

This time, with memory of that other case, close magnifying glass examinations by the three Pathologists has revealed no wounds, shrunken or otherwise.

"So, nothing beside the burns."

"I examined one of the burns," she says, "and I found that the flesh under it had less adenosine triphosphate than an adjacent unburnt portion. ATP, as you know from my many lectures, is what controls muscular contraction. It indicates that a sharp contraction had taken place in that particular spot."

"Supports the defibrillator theory?" Pride asks.

"No, Dwayne, it doesn't."

"Then what–?"

"It _confirms_ it," she announces with all due relish. "She was definitely shocked with high voltage electrical current of short duration. No doubt about it; this was death by AED. Come look."

x

She leads the men to where the shirt Annette Saunders had worn lays on her microscope and the feed is directed out to the plasma screen on the wall. "Now normally when using an AED you remove everything from the torso, particularly jewelry and chains. The charge is brief, less than half a second, but you need paddle to skin contact for maximum effectiveness. I don't know why whoever did it didn't do it." She pauses for a moment, runs the line again in her head and gives it up.

"Now here we have a pristine portion of her blouse. See on the screen, the uniform fibers are pretty uniform." She looks up at each of them. "Tough room. Anyway, that's the way the material is supposed to look. Now watch."

The view becomes dizzying as the vastly enlarged threads shoot across the screen, and when the image resolves the threads, at this magnification resembling cables, are no longer of uniform thickness or the straight lines they should be. Very evident bulges are visible in portions of the threads, and many are fused to adjacent cables into somewhat distorted paths. On several spots the threads are expanded to resemble the cross sections of footballs.

"The charges weren't long enough to actually burn the material, they did more spot damage to her skin than to the shirt, mostly due to moisture in the skin as opposed to the shirt. But we mapped the marks collectively and you are very definitely looking for rectangular rounded corner defibrillator paddles."

"That's good work, Abs." He kisses her cheek but, as he starts out, he delivers an especially sharp wake-up call to his SFA.

"Ow! What was _that_ for?"

"Keep your head out of their bras."

xxx

When Gibbs leads Pride and DiNozzo back into the bullpen, they find LaSalle and Brody standing near McGee and Palmer's desks rather than across the partition beyond Gibbs' and David's desks, and he extends his hand to his former partner to take point.

"Abby has definitely ruled out other causes and confirmed that Annette Saunders was killed by a series of electric charges from a defibrillator."

"McGee," Gibbs calls.

"I've looked into the records from that time," he says, "and I'm still looking. The problem is that there's no record that she ever bought one and, if there were, there's no record that the family sold it. All I have is Credit Card information, and everyone but Paul had several. But a defibrillator is not a controlled instrument so there's no need for a record and if they paid or got cash there's no trail. The family had a ton of money in those days and we're talking the equivalent of pocket change for any of us."

"What about the house?"

"That gets more interesting. The McGregor Mansion was so named for the original builder and occupants, the McGregor family through the 1700s to late 1800s, when ownership was transferred to the only daughter Edith McGregor in the fourth generation, who later married a Warren Saunders in 1902 and the family maintained the original name. Society was very big in the period. The original plans of the mansion from the 1780's show a room there but plans from the Building Commission in the 1940's do not, nor do the most recent Renovation designs. It seems there were three rooms to a side, then it went to two on that side and I find no record that when the two other rooms were extended anyone made an issue of the fact that they didn't touch. For whatever reason the family did a redesign, or when they did it, they took that reason to their graves. Twelve feet might well have been ignored."

"Ignored." He doesn't think so. How can a family live for generations in a Mansion like McGregor and not notice that the rooms don't line up? "Where's Saunders?"

As the man turns to his computer, Ziva pulls his attention. "Gibbs, I have found a cousin of Devlin, a William Boyer, who the NIS record shows was at the Game Night at the Devlin residence. He is a Butcher, 53 years old and resides with his family on First Street between Randolph and S."

"DiNozzo, you and Ziva. See if he still remembers if Devlin was there the whole night."

x

"Sir," Michelle cuts in diffidently, "I managed to get the Warrants you asked for through Agent Arnell's team at Night Court. I've searched the Insurance records for Jerry and Debbie Devlin. She has been treated at the Bell 'Treat & Release' two miles from her home on three occasions since the beginning of the year."

"What for?"

"The Insurance records list certain tests, but they don't specify details. I can't tell from them what the–"

"I didn't ask what the Insurance company said. What do the Doctors say?"

"Sir, it's Sunday. They're closed. All I have are the dates and costs and the names of the tests and treatments."

"Well? Get downstairs and have your husband translate."

"Yes, sir," she answers in a whisper and leaves quickly by the long route to the elevator.

x

"Chris," Pride directs, "you and Meredeth stake out Devlin's house. If you can find any proof that he's abusing her, bring them in. Maybe with her we can sweat him."

"You got it, King," LaSalle assures him, his tone saying he's looking forward to catching the large man hitting his smaller wife.

"McGee, you find Saunders?" He's given him enough time to find the man twice.

"I spoke to Dorneget, boss. He's at his Company, Dorneget is staking it out."

xxx

Michelle steps into the unusually crowded Autopsy suite, the sighing pneumatic doors attracting all three Pathologists.

" _Hi, Shelly_!" Sammy, at the far table, greets her in a high falsetto voice. She's doing the External Examination of a middle aged black man while Ducky and her husband explore the inner workings of a younger man on the middle table.

"Oh, please; not that," she appeals, crossing the room to the young woman.

"What's wrong?"

"I like Tim as a partner, but after Una Eilidh Nimah I've had all his versions of me that I can take."

"Okay. As long as he doesn't do that to me, I'm happy." Michelle knows her face betrays her, as usual, for Sammy's "What?" stings her.

"You haven't heard."

"Heard what?"

She glances back and sees she has everyone's attention, that Ducky has turned off the recorder over his table, and she truly regrets her life.

"Tim's doing another book, and you're the star."

"I _am?"_ She sounds pleased (when does she not?) but Michelle hopes she'll feel the same when this conversation, which she really wants out of, is over. Samantha Sky is fluent in the language of Emphatics, but she has a feeling that she's going to hear a very different manner of expression very soon.

"That is not necessarily a good thing," Ducky cautions his apprentice. "The inspirations for pivotal characters for his second book were subsequently murdered in real life."

"He's doing an adaptation this time, and I really don't know why so please don't ask me, of the case in February when Staff Sergeant Wendy Langley was murdered."

She's never before seen all pleasure fall off Sammy's face but this time it crashes hard. "What?"

"Miss Sky."

She ignores him, a surprise in itself, to step out and around the foot of the table. "The time _I_ was accused of killing Karen _and_ Langley?"

 _"Miss_ Sky."

This one she cannot ignore, and when she looks past his clear face shield his expression is stony. "Yes, Doctor," she says meekly and returns to her place, but she's not done. "But tell Tim I'm going to talk to him."

"Honey?" Jimmy says, reminding Michelle she didn't come down to deliver the bad news about her partner's new 'Work of Friction'. None of the first three had been received without consequences and she has no high hopes for this one.

"Oh, yeah." She would far prefer to ask her husband, but it is definitely not a good idea to bypass an annoyed Ducky. "Doctor, I have the Insurance records for tests and treatment that Debbie Devlin had. Would you tell me what it means?"

He raises the plastic shield from his face. "I shall be happy to," he assures her graciously as he pulls off the bloodied gloves and tosses them into the wastebasket below the head of the table. He takes the pages from her and peruses them for a few moments. She can see he isn't pleased by what he finds.

"As you have no doubt seen," he says by way of bringing his Apprentice and Journeyman into the update, "Mrs. Devlin has been seen at the Bell 'Treat and Release' three times in the current year. I see charges for X-rays; MRIs, one with and another without Contrast; three blood tests; prescriptions for 50 mg doses of meperidine, which is an exceptionally powerful pain medication, this was given to her on all three occasions. Treatments to her left arm and a cast to immobilize a fractured wrist. Two Gynecological examinations, on her first and third visits. There are other references, but I would have to see the actual Medical Record to determine the exact natures of those injuries and the specific treatments given."

"So what you're saying, in your inimitable gentlemanly way, is that someone kept beating the hell out of her."

He hands the papers back to her. "Essentially correct."

Author's Note: The case that Tim McGee is adapting for his 'The Other Locked Room' is depicted as my episode 'Accused'.


	15. Domestic Bliss

Chapter Fifteen  
Domestic Bliss

"It's nice to know," Meredith Brody says to her partner from behind the wheel as they wait in the black Stratus, standard issue assigned to them from the NCIS lot when they'd arrived, "that Stakeouts are as dull up here as they can get in the Big Not-So-Easy."

"There are two kinds of Stakeouts," Chris LaSalle philosophizes as they sit in the air conditioned car in the early afternoon sun bake. "Stakeouts where absolutely nothing happens for hours and Stakeouts on a Sunday afternoon when you could be anywhere else in the world where your life isn't wasting away."

The car is, fortunately, under the shade of a tree so the temperature on the outside is only broiling instead of volcanic, and they watch a green two story suburban house across the street which, to the best of appearances through drawn shades on both levels, could well be empty.

Pedestrian traffic appears limited to the young, possibly because those mature enough to know better will not venture into the furnace. The only ones the agents see passing in front of said house wear somewhat less than what's legal on most beaches, but neither of them can blame anyone as the sidewalks radiate heat upward to compete with the downward blaze.

x

"So," Brody says, noting her partner's attention on a comely trio of women approaching across the street, who among them wear a square yard's worth of clothing, "you think he did it?"

LaSalle won't shrug, but it's a near thing. "You read the same reports I did. He was the only likely one they found whose alibi couldn't be independently verified, just family and relatives, so his I think starts out pathetic and lost ground over the years. Come on, 'Game Night'? Who does Game Night? King and the others noted anger issues, though in those days it meant 'easily pissed off at the drop of a hat'. He was dating her and was among the last to see her. Add to that, Doctor Mallard and his team found a broken arm and broken rib and the diaries showed she was out of the Ambulance work and the Clinic for a couple of weeks the year before _but_ she was at the Clinic the day before she disappeared."

"If she didn't report the injury to the Clinic," she says, "but Ducky found the dislocated shoulder to be 72 hours old, give or take, then she was injured during the days she was off from Aventine, so they may never have known if she didn't call out yet."

"Though you _can_ pop the rotator back in, you'd be hurting like hell." That much he remembers from several years ago.

"But if there's anyplace to go for pain killers, it's her job. From what I gleaned from her diaries, she'd do it, go to work and tough it out."

"Sounds like someone I know," he says with a sly glance.

"I say Devlin's excuse is going to fall apart when David and DiNozzo press the cousin." She sighs. "Twenty one years. I don't remember what I was doing twenty one years ago."

"Who remembers kindergarten?"

She gives him a flattered smile which crashes into alert attention. "There they are."

x

'They' are walking along the sidewalk from the right and approach their home from beyond the Willis' house. Jerry holds his wife's forearm, LaSalle thinks, somewhat too tightly as he directs her along the sidewalk. In the furnace-like heat that smothers Washington he wears shorts and tee shirt, Debbie is in a short white skirt and red blouse and as she walks he can see she's quite unencumbered by a bra. Part of that certainty comes from the way Jerry pulls her, turns her and herds her toward the house.

"I don't think we're going to have to watch for very long," Brody says, hand on her door latch.

"Ease up on the reins, pardner," LaSalle advises as Jerry forces the woman in before him and shuts the door.

"I want to be close enough if something happens," she declares.

"Not as much as I do." He looks back for oncoming cars before opening the passenger door onto the street, but Brody is beside him before he gets the car door closed again. The cool air of the car mocks them now that they've abandoned it for the furnace that immediately heats their clothes, leaving them only seconds to enjoy the remnant of the AC before they'll start to bake.

They cross the street, avoid the direct path up the paved stones in favor of approaching each front corner so they can look in through the edges of the drawn curtains. When Chris looks in the larger window's edge he sees movement in his slice of the living room and waves for his partner to come closer.

Inside Devlin shoves his wife against the left wall of the living room with enough force to shake the pictures hung upon it and slaps her so hard the noise can be heard through the closed window. He backhands her even harder, then grabs both breasts in so tight a grip that she covers her mouth in an attempt to contain her shriek.

LaSalle breaks from his position. "Son of a _Bitch_!"

x

He draws his Sig as he cuts around Brody, arcs out to the lawn and curves in so his kick to the door carries his full inertia and weight. The portal slams open with a blast of fractured wood and he's through before Brody, in a straight line, can reach the door.

"FREEZE! NCIS!" LaSalle's command fills the large house to overflowing as he holds his weapon on the man. Debbie has collapsed to her knees and both freeze in surprise, crushing fists still clenching her breasts, before the echo of the agent's order fades.

"What the hell–?"

"Let her go! Back away, slowly."

Devlin does release his wife but turns on LaSalle, fists clenched as he advances on the agent. He's still some feet away. "You son of a –"

Brody, wanting to move in to help Debbie who leans crumpled against the wall clutching her breasts, is amazed to see her partner lower his weapon and shove it back into its holster.

"Take a swing at me," LaSalle commands. "Please."

x

Angry as Jerry Devlin may be, he hesitates against that fury and Brody gets past him to bend down to reach for Debbie. LaSalle pulls out a set of handcuffs from his back pocket.

"Jerome Devlin, you're under arrest–" is as far as LaSalle gets before a screech assaults both agents' ears and Meredith, distracted for an instant by the arrest, doubles over from the titanic impact of a fist slamming into her stomach. A hand clutches her short hair and she's yanked face first onto the floor.

Chris, as distracted by the woman's assault on his partner, doesn't see the punch he'd invited until it's an inch from his face and in the next second he topples over a chair, his face immediately going numb.

Meredith tries at first to block punches from the insensate woman who lands atop her before it's clear this is no considered attack but a wild assault of scratches, bites and slaps interspersed with punches to her head. Going from rescuer to warrior, she shoves the wildcat off her, draws her fist back and hits as hard as she can, knocks the woman aside and gets to her feet, barely ready in time to meet a wild charge.

Chris, rolling out of the first punch to gain some distance, is on his feet before Jerry, in a boxing stance, gets around the overturned chair. Boxing, for those who follow the rules, can be formidable but it in no way stands up against techniques designed to use all body parts in putting an enemy down so he doesn't get up again.

The two battles are short and decisive, leaving both Devlins unmoving on the floor and the disheveled agents standing over them.

Chris turns from their motionless prisoners to his partner. In the furnace blast that comes in through the destroyed door - they are going to have to arrange a proper seal for the door as well as put up yellow 'Crime Scene' tape to keep the curious away and post an Agent to protect the house - the perspiration runs down the agents bodies in mini-rivers.

"I hate domestic arrests."

xxx

David and DiNozzo step off the elevator on the 6th floor of the huge apartment house on First Street between Randolph and S and walk to their right down the corridor that stretches along ten apartments, the second on their left being the residence of William Boyer and his family. They have not called ahead, preferring to leave the Sunday afternoon contact with Boyer to the actual encounter.

The door is opened by a large and bearded man whose tee shirt struggles to contain its load. "Yes, may I help you?" he asks, looking at the pair who are quite obviously strangers to him and the man's surprise mounts at the sight of their distinctive caps.

"NCIS," Ziva says as they display their badges.

Boyer puts his hands up. "Hey, my Manager handles all the business. I don't even deal with that end. By the time they get to me they're not new, they're old. Besides, I'm just the Butcher. If there's a problem, you'll have to talk to him."

"Wrong NCIS," DiNozzo tells him, deciding that this time, since he's a butcher, he'll give Boyer the point. They're not from the New Cattle Inspection System.

"Naval Criminal Investigative Service," Ziva clarifies, which only confuses the man further.

"Navy? If we supplied you with any meat and there's a problem, I'm sorry but I know nothing about it."

David and DiNozzo exchange a long suffering glance before Ziva tries again. "May we come in?"

Apparently he can think of no reason to deny them. "I guess so. Come in."

x

A corridor with kitchen on the right opens, followed by a few more steps into the living room, left wall flush with the hall and right extending outward. A closed door further on goes to the rest of the apartment but the air conditioner in the left window to their right works to keep the room cool. Beside them is a computer work station and printer, the right wall has two windows and a cable television with an assortment of stacked DVDs and Videos. The wall before them has a stereo and various book cases, repeated on the left wall beside the couch. Upon that couch sit a middle aged woman beside a teenage girl. On the television before them is a show Tony recognizes as a decades old episode of Airwolf.

"Is there someplace we might speak in private?" he asks the standing man as the women look on curiously.

Boyer picks up the remote control, turns off Airwolf to the daughter's very evident annoyance but she says nothing. "Anything you want to say you can say to all of us," he tells them, glancing hard at the aggravated girl. Her aborted move to leave, intercepted by her mother's hand on her arm, transmutes into a glare at Tony and his partner.

"Okay." He likes additional unguarded faces. "Do you remember an Annette Saunders?" Three blank looks. "She was dating your cousin Jerome Devlin when she disappeared twenty one years ago."

Surprise expresses itself in blinks and then raised eyebrows. "Twenty one years ago?" he asks in heavy disbelief. "I barely remember last Tuesday."

Tony and Ziva see that the wife isn't as well informed. The find no understanding in the evidently mid-teen daughter seated beside her mother.

"She was a Naval Lieutenant," Ziva clarifies. "Her disappearance was investigated by the then Naval Investigative Service." She gives the frowning Boyer time to search his life.

"Vaguely," he admits. "I remember Jerry was pretty worried."

"Worried?"

"Well, his girlfriend disappeared, as you say. I don't even know if anything developed. I remember talking to some people but..."

x

"But what?" DiNozzo asks after several seconds.

"Give me a break," he appeals. "I don't remember a tenth of it. Jerry was dating her, she disappeared, Police and Federal Agents investigated." His vagueness gradually fades, his tone growing in determination as the memories come back. "There was a search. I helped out because Jerry and I were - are – cousins, but I didn't know her. I was given a picture or two, otherwise I could have passed her six inches away on the street and have no clue.

"But nothing happened, or if it did no one ever told me. I only remember that, for a while, if I saw someone I thought could have been her I'd look at the picture, but it was never her. I heard a couple of months later that he'd moved on."

"Did you keep in touch with him about it?"

"Naaaa. What for? If he didn't bring it up I wasn't going to. I kept my eyes open, as I said, because he cared about her, was upset. We're family, so I helped out. But eventually, well, when there's no word and all I could do was look at women passing on the street, it faded. I mean, we weren't truly tight. I think I was in my mid-thirties–"

"You were 32."

Boyer gives him a rueful smile. "You guys are better informed than I am. But Jerry's 7 years younger, that'd make him 25 then. At that age you move on. You may hurt, but you move on."

"Do you still keep in close touch with Jerry?"

He shakes his head. "Not really. No." He glances at his wife. "Well, Jean keeps up with the birthdays. We'll exchange Christmas cards... most years. But honestly, if he moved I wouldn't know it until the cards came back, and then I might follow up just to keep the records straight if I ever did have to get in touch. But he has his circles and I have mine."

"When was the last time you spoke to him?"

Boyer looks back through the past, but after several seconds he shrugs. "Months. Maybe over a year."

x

"The night Annette Saunders disappeared," Ziva says, "the Investigating Agents record there was a family gathering at the Devlin home, a 'game night'."

"Could be. I remember a couple in those days. My mother and his, being the ones who married into the clans, as it were, tried to keep the Devlins and the Boyers kind of together. In fact, they did it with the Carsons and the Woodburys too, my and his mom's sides. It was kind of fun. I remember there were several over those years, when I didn't have dates." He glances at his patient wife. "And no, we met well after those days."

"Do you remember if, that night, Jerome was there the entire evening."

Boyer shrugs. "I don't know." He spreads his hands. "We could have played the same games all night or not but..." he shrugs and spreads more widely, "I don't know."

xxx

In NCIS' sub-basement Interrogation section, the orange cinder block walls setting a gloomy tone before one even reaches the confrontation site, Gibbs faces the handcuffed Jerome Devlin across the table, a beige folder laying before him. Chris LaSalle stands behind their prisoner, his presence in the huge mirror heavy. Devlin glares at the reflection in the one-way mirror beyond which Tina Larsen stands beside the monitoring technician.

The Devlin home, with a smashed in front door, is under the watch of three shifts of agents until repairs can be arranged.

Gibbs had wanted to meet with Paul Saunders, but Devlin had been delivered into his hands first.

"You had no business breaking in and invading my privacy."

"Privacy. That's what they call it these days."

"Yes." He looks back to LaSalle. "And you broke down my door, assaulted my wife and I–"

"We stopped you from assaulting your wife."

"HEY," Gibbs barks, pulling Devlin's attention. "Over here."

"You going to make good on your crimes?" the man challenges him.

Gibbs hadn't been pleased to learn how the man had been captured, but he won't drop from a hard line. If Devlin has a grievance he wants to pursue, he can do it later through proper channels – if he beats a Murder charge.

He doesn't believe the man will.

x

"Special Agents LaSalle and Brody halted your assault on your wife."

"So what? What if they did. That's our business, not _Federal_ _Age_ nts'."

"True. Unless she makes a complaint–."

"She won't."

"Then we hold you as witnesses and turn you over to Metro PD. Take a two minute phone call."

"What is your beef? What we do in our own home is our business, not yours."

xx

Debbie Devlin would have been in the Conference Room for this interview with Dwayne Pride and Meredith Brody if not for her attack on Brody, so the conversation between them takes place in Interrogation 2. The young woman has taken on the added status of 'Leverage' against her husband and looks even younger and smaller opposite the two stern agents, her wrists shackled on the tabletop.

Michelle Palmer observes the recorded interview through the one-way mirror in Ob 2.

"Assaulting a Federal Officer is a serious crime," Pride tells the woman, who brings her hands back, clutches them upon her lap. His voice is masked of emotion, which drives Devlin's fear to greater heights.

"I'm sorry I hit you," Debbie says in a trembling whisper. "You people were going to hurt my husband. He didn't do anything!"

"We came in when he had you backed to a wall, slapping you around and trying to pull your breasts off."

She shakes her head. "Jerry doesn't hurt me that much. He wouldn't."

Pride and Brody exchange a disbelieving glances. The woman's been told that Brody and LaSalle came upon her being hit, if Brody asked her to raise her tee shirt they could show her, and document, bruises and worse. Reasoned denial is one thing, this is madness.

"Mrs. Devlin," Brody tries again. "He was hurting you."

"No he _wasn't_."

"He had you backed to the wall and was hitting you, then squeezing your breasts and you were screaming."

" _No._ You don't understand. He was _not_ hurting me. And if you say I was being 'abused' then you can't arrest him because I know I was not being abused and I'll tell everyone that, so you can't hold him."

"Not exactly," Pride tells her. "My agents, as witnesses, can press Charges. We don't need your cooperation." This isn't true, at least in the long term, but part of this technique relies upon Ignorance of the Law.

"Stay _out_ of this. He was _not_ hurting me."

"Well, unless you and I have different definitions," Pride says, "from what my agents told me it certainly sounds like he was hurting you."

"He wasn't."

"What would you call it?"

"I call it being a good husband. "

x

'This isn't working,' Brody decides and moves on to 'Plan C', the one she, Ziva and Michelle had tried the last time they'd been at the house. "Mrs. Devlin, if you're afraid, we can help you. You're not alone."

"I've asked you to stay _out_ of this. Why won't you?"

The honest answer, that this is a key to investigating the Saunders murder, would be the wrong thing to say. In fact, this woman's case has become an issue in its own right, and one she's uncomfortable stepping away from, not until she's exhausted every avenue of help. She's heard about and read the complaints from neighbors and reports from the Police, and she cannot sit here and do nothing.

"I've known women like you, who believed you had no way out, who believed they had to take the abuse, who believed it's their husbands' Right to beat the hell out of them for the slightest provocation - or for none at all. But we _can_ help you. Just say the word and you'll have all you need."

"Jerry is a good husband."

"I'm sure he started out that way, and I'm sure he says he loves you. Maybe in some way he does, but you've been to the Bell 'Treat and Release' three times already for injuries. You had an injured arm and, our Pathologist says, a fractured wrist. You've had x-rays and MRIs together with very powerful pain medications and two Gynecological treatments for injuries that all have the same source: your husband."

"NO! You're wrong! That's not true!"

Pride and Brody exchange a very brief glance, enough to agree that they must settle in for a very long session.

xx

"I have to think that if you do this to your wife," Gibbs presses their prime suspect in I1 as he prepares a closed file folder before him, "what did you do to Annette Saunders?"

It's obvious this catches Devlin unprepared. "What does she have to do with any of this? I told you before I had nothing–"

Gibbs has slid an 8 x 10 photo from the folder. In the dark secret room the camera's bright flash renders Annette Saunders' white uniform stark against her wizened face, the parchment-like flesh pulled tight to her skull. Her closed eyelids are sunken since her eyes have condensed to the size of peas. Her lips have shrunk away from her teeth, giving her a chilling smile. Everything, including her spread blonde hair, is covered with a fine film of dust, the accumulation of two decades of stagnant air.

"Oh my God." The next photo, a full body image that slams stark contrast between the white uniform and dark, shriveled face, hands and legs, flesh gone and skin shrunk tight to the thin bones. Devlin looks up, white face drawn in horror. "What happened?" is a sick whisper.

Gibbs knows what he'd asked, but doesn't intend to answer the question as such. "When you die in a dry place, the body doesn't always decay. Organs, flesh, fluids, everything dries out and the skin contracts and pulls tight around the bones. You get a mummy. The room you put her in has no circulation, the dust settled like a blanket–"

"I didn't do this. I had _nothing_ to do with this. I told you, I was with my family the day she disappeared."

"We checked on that. Your only witness doesn't remember you being there the whole night."

"I never hit her! I never did anything to her!"

"Like you never hit your wife?"

"You don't _understand."_

"The same kind of injuries your wife suffers were found on Saunders." This is an exaggeration, but if it brings a confession or even good clues he'll sleep well tonight.

"No. That can't be. No. I see what you're doing. I want a Lawyer. I'm not answering any more questions. I want a Lawyer down here _now._ "


	16. The Queen of Hinky

Chapter Sixteen  
The Queen of Hinky

It's an hour later when Pride and Brody step into the orange cinder block corridor and when he looks right he sees the petite Asian woman Palmer (okay, Lee would be easier to remember) step out from the Observation room. He doesn't like the haunted expression on her face but he closes the door firmly before approaching the women. She looks normal, but not to him. "Holding. You have two? I want to keep them apart."

"Yes, sir. Gibbs has already taken the husband up. He lawyered up."

"S.O.P. for slime balls."

"Yes, sir. I'll call for an agent to escort her up."

"You all right?" he asks, seeing the answer in her eyes.

She looks along the corridor beyond him. "Yes."

He could have read that lie from around the far corner. "I'll see you upstairs," he tells both agents. Whatever is disturbing the woman, he'll let Brody work it out with her - if it can be worked out. Lately, on this case, he hasn't found too many things he's comfortable about predicting a happy ending on.

He heads on toward the elevator, leaving them alone.

"I... think... I want to see Abby for a few minutes." Michelle breathes.

"Come with?"

Palmer looks like she'd love to find an excuse to say 'no', but none seem to come to mind. "Sure."

xxx

The rapid beeps over the clear door announce the Agents' arrival and Abby Sciuto, dressed in her open white lab coat over black and white Referee style tee shirt over matching skirt horizontally aligned to be a complete mismatch, approaches them. In the moment needed to take in the outrageous woman they see that her boots continue this black and white stripe motif to excessive extents, for her left boot is vertical but the right is horizontal.

Palmer, who hadn't said a word during the trip, is forced into announcing that "This has got to be a record for you."

"I'm planning on this coming Halloween. Sammy's going as Beetlejuice and I'm shooting for a cartoon Sandworm motif."

"I want pictures," Meredith announces.

"I'm scared of your pictures," Michelle declares.

"Then I won't send you any, Vampi."

"I'm not going as Vampirella this year, no matter where the party is."

"Well, yeah, over three months along, I guess not." Then her eyes alight in well displayed inspiration. "You could go with an oven suspended about your waist."

"Please," she puts her hands to her head, "I can't even think about any of that." She lowers her hands and her mood. "My brain won't work anymore. I can't take this in. I needed to see the 'Queen of Hinky' for you to put it back on."

This is a hinky enough request in itself, and the two taller women exchange a bewildered look over their friend's head. It is so clear that Halloween costumes in late July are not their friend's problem.

x

"What's up?" Abby asks. She remembers the last time she'd seen Michelle conflustered, but fortunately this doesn't approach by half the minutes before her wedding. Part One.

"I can't get my head around this," she confesses. "I keep trying to, but it doesn't come. I need Vamperstein to help me."

At Abby's extra bewildered expression, Brody fills her in on the interview with Debbie Devlin and everything that had come of it, particularly the woman's portrayal of her abuser as 'a good husband'.

"I know how it can be," Michelle says, fingers pressed to her temples as though to keep her mind in when it wants to flee. "I've seen more than too much, I studied things from the Stockholm Effect to the... whatever. I can't see how she can think this èdú dí rǔmà nüèdài kuáng could possibly be fit for anything. When I see him I want to shove him into an Iron Maiden and slam the door."

Abby takes her arm firmly enough to silence her. "'A Witch who can't control her emotions'..." is the only reminder she'll give.

Brody glances to the silver circled five pointed star with the cross in its center suspended from the silver chain to hang between the Agent's breasts, explained on the way to Norfolk as the dual faith charm Jimmy had given her as their engagement present.

"This has more to do than with emotions," Michelle counters.

"Okay, how about Rule Number 20? 'Never get personally involved in a case'."

x

She backs out of the grip, but does take a step back emotionally as well. "I can't help but think of Jimmy," she confesses. "Jimmy would _never_ hit me." At Abby's smile and 'tell me another one' look, she declares "I'm not talking about _that._ When Jimmy pulls me over his lap it's because we both want a warm up. I love those smacks, especially the 'smacks and pets', and the best are the 'smack, pet and inserts'."

Meredith grins and Abby points to the smaller woman's abdomen. "Which was responsible for that?"

Michelle returns a lascivious smile. "A _heck_ of a lot more than that, and for longer than I care to remember. But that's my point. That's fun time." But her smile vanishes and her voice goes flat. "But I told Jimmy, well before we got married, I told him 'you will _hit_ me only once. Because when you go to bed I'll dent my cast iron skillet on your head. I won't leave you, but in the morning I'll go to my desk and start to make your life a living hell'."

"Nice that he knows where he stands."

"Darn right. But he's never touched me in a way I didn't like to be touched. But this... _woman_. She takes the most horrendous beatings, I don't know how many times Metro had to be called but she had to be treated by doctors three times this year."

"What Chris and I saw," Brody confirms, "was no 'lover's tiff'. I didn't see the start of it, just heard about it from Chris, but what I saw of her with his ham hands crushing her breasts, that was more than enough."

"I wish I knew," Abby says longingly. "Statis–."

 _"Please_ don't quote statistics we all know," Michelle appeals.

"Then what should I do? You came to me."

She stares up at her friend, finally has to admit. "Goddess, I have no idea. I just needed to vent."

"How was it?"

"Lousy."

xxx

"The fact remains," Pride tells the seven agents in the bullpen, "we can hold the Devlins for only twenty four hours but I really don't see it going anywhere. I spoke to Ducky; he'll meet with Mrs. Devlin in the morning, try to sort through whatever's going on with her. But unless we want to charge her with assaulting Brody she gets cut loose tomorrow afternoon and she's our only leverage with him." He looks to Brody who turns the responsibility over to Gibbs. If the Deputy SAIC wants the woman held, she'll press the Charge but

"No. If we can't break her by then we probably won't. Unless you want to," he turns it back to Brody.

"No. She's no fighter. The fact is I landed better punches than she did and I was trying to keep her off me. And she can't have had anything to do with Saunders."

"Not at four years old. No, we'll try to use her to break his story, but since he's waiting for his Lawyer, we'll have to find some other way. McGee."

"Um, yes, Boss?"

"Where's Paul Saunders?"

"I have Agent Ned Dorneget tailing him now. He left the hotel twenty minutes ago, Dorneget's hanging back to watch him but not crowding. He's reporting back on Saunders' activities but so far there's not much. I've gone over the Contacts I got from his cell phone before I gave it back to him when he was here yesterday, but so far I haven't gotten to someone who knows him from way back when."

Gibbs looks to the distant clock. It's 1546 and while this case has already taken twenty one years to solve there's not enough progress nor potential for same to justify the Overtime for two teams. Further, he needs a break from his usual 2100 departures. He's waited long enough on this rapidly concluding weekend to exchange a few hours relaxation with his old friend.

"DiNozzo, LaSalle, in the morning you keep trying to find someone who could've known about that Secret Room. McGee, tell Dorneget I want Saunders here in the morning when he relieves Gamma Shift on the Stakeout. Palmer and Brody, you work on Mrs. Devlin. Palmer, did you get in touch with Devlin's Lawyer?"

"Tina Larsen at Holding let him make a call, but apparently it didn't go well, not from how steamed he got."

"Okay, we'll see what a few hours of steaming will do. Go home, everyone. Tomorrow's a new day and it won't be as good as this one was."

x

No one manages to do more than to begin collecting their personal items before nine people enter the bullpen; the other three Alpha Shift teams: Fred Higgins, Susan Bourne, Max Crawford and Sol Kirchner; Melanie Kelman, Patrick Larsen and Kenneth Templeton; and Kevin Lamb and Lisa DuBois. The only shift agent who does not invade the room is Janet Levy, recuperating at her parents' home following a horrific attack.

"What is this," Gibbs asks the sixteen generally, "a Convention?"

"If so," Lisa quips, "is it too late to get my money back?"

"I'm afraid so," Director Jennifer Shepherd says from the nearby staircase from the elevated MTAC platform before making the final turn and approaching from beside the wide window.

"I'll make this short. On an undetermined morning last week, and we are still gathering Intel, Grekor Kanyicska was murdered by person or persons unknown."

"Why is it," DiNozzo asks, his voice laden with doom, "when you make something short there's always so much to say?"

"Because, Agent DiNozzo, this tilts an already unstable 'Balance of Power' considerably more than it had been."

Grekor Kanyicska, whom they had encountered on Memorial Day, had been perhaps the only Arms Dealer in the world who gave the late Rene 'LaGranoille' Benoit significant challenge. Benoit had been assassinated some time ago, leaving his organization firmly in the hands of CIA's mole Trent Kort, who would play the role of Arms Kingpin for so long as it suited the Government's needs.

None of the agents hold much hope that Kanyicska's organization is in such good hands.

"Do we know anything?" Higgins asks.

"LAPD has jurisdiction, and while OSP is on Alert they have no information. They learned about the death a little more than an hour ago. Detective Deeks has no particular insights. Apparently Kanyicska's own organization sat on this for some time."

"You think it was Kort?" Lamb asks.

"According to the CIA, there was no intent to remove Kanyicska from the picture. As you know, it is far easier to know what the body is doing when you keep the head in sight."

"I can think of one person," McGee says, "who I'm sure isn't sorry he's dead." During the days leading up to and then during the Greater East Coast Comic Art Convention, Special Agent Nell Jones had had to deal with issues above and beyond any reasonable expectation. What she'd been forced to endure was not the kind of thing anyone would issue a Medal for, and he doubts anyone would have been so tasteless as to offer one.

"Well, no, McGee," Gibbs says. "Not when the last time they were together she was stomping the hell out of him."

"I am putting all of NCIS on Alert Level Orange."

The stability of Kanyicska's organization had been something to be desired. Now, as both sets of Arms Merchants strive to rearrange their operations, a close eye is needed. The transition may be smooth - unlikely - or it will mean bodies, perhaps a great many, on the ground.

xxx

Abby had decided to wait out as much of the blistering heat as she could before braving the trip back home. The Forenzchic's A/C isn't truly up to the challenge of a 90 plus degree commute on sagging asphalt but she manages to eventually slog home and climb Mount Everest (if only) up to her third floor apartment.

When she pushes the door open she walks into a wall of gloriously cool air and is grateful Sammy beat her home. She'd called before leaving the lab and found that her friend was already there and at 5:00 had turned off the timer on the air conditioner, originally set for 6:00 pm, that one hour making a huge difference.

She peals off her striped shirt but decides to stop at her bra, last night's ambush sharp in her mind. The living room looks normal but she'll check the rest of the apartment after the cool air permeates her skin a little more deeply.

She could well be safe, however. Kahn Noonian Singh had pointed out that 'Revenge is a dish best served cold', so she might have several months of safety before a winter assault. Then again, Kahn hadn't mentioned air conditioning and he didn't have an impish room mate like Samantha Sky to contend with.

Sammy comes out of the kitchen before her wearing an extra large and long Nationals tee shirt as a sleep shirt that reaches below her knees, the can of Reddi Whip in her hand and an evil smile upon her lips.

"You wouldn't _dare_ ," Abby declares, pulling herself up to her full height to add to their natural eight inch difference plus her extra tall mis-striped boots vs. Sammy's bare feet. She's already seen her friend's pink furry bunny slippers, complete with whiskers at the toes, pink ears tucked back and white cotton balls set behind the ends, on the floor in front of the couch.

"No. When I get you back it'll be when you least expect it." She shakes the can. "For now I'm getting you back in that _I'm_ polishing off the sliced strawberries." She goes back into the kitchen.

"Bone at your teat," Abby calls.

"Already was," she calls back.

x

Abby listens to the _swoobossheh_ of the ejecting cream as she steps closer to the laboring conditioner, not giving a whit what thrill she might give the passersby three stories below. If anyone _is_ looking up, they deserve a treat.

A few seconds later Sammy returns with a white ceramic bowl and a thick sheaf of papers and carries them to the black convertible. When she sits down the overlarge Nationals shirt drops off her left shoulder and she leaves it there. "'Sides, nothing I could come up with could top the kinky sex in this book."

"That's McGee's new book?" she asks, abandoning her monopolization of the air conditioner and sitting on the couch beside her friend.

"Yeppers."

"How is it?"

She plops the papers onto her lap and dips into the bowl, coming out with a white and red treat. "I only skimmed though it, but a couple of scenes convinced me that Tim seriously needs to go to his wife and have her clean out his mind with Holy Water."

"Really."

"There's a section between your fantasy counterpart and mine in your lab that'll curl your pubic hair."

 _"Where?"_ she reaches to snatch the pages but Sammy is faster and pulls them out of reach.

"Chill out, Vamperstein. You can read it later."

"Be-yatch." Sammy sticks her tongue out at her. "So who did Tim put in this one?" The cast list of his last one had been formidable.

x

"Well you're in it, or rather 'Amy Sutton' is," she says, popping another strawberry slice into her mouth." He calls me 'Sabrina Shore'. Everyone else is intensely recognizable." She ruffles through the pages, getting strawberry and cream on the edges before she fishes out another treat. "Except I don't find Siobhan. You'd think she'd have a major roll."

"After 'Cearbhall's Quest' and what we all went through, coupled with what Princess Mairenn was seen to go through, she made him swear never to use her as a character ever again."

"I should have done that." The real quest had happened before she'd met him, but if he'd taken warnings seriously she might have done well in preventing him from using her in book 4, at least without asking permission.

"Wouldn't have worked. After 'Rock Hollow' each and every one of us told him in explicit and agonizing detail what we'd do to him if he used us again without permission."

"That was book two." She ruffles the pages, sets them down and bites another creamed strawberry. "This is book four. How come it worked for Siobhan and none of us?"

"She's his wife."

Sammy nods, takes another slice. "She can give him pain none of us can."

"The kind that will really have him singing the _blues_."

"Oww-we-ouch."

"Speaking of pain," Abby says, "I remember how hard he works to keep his work secret, what precautions he takes, until the gang had to get copies for their case. How did you get an advance draft?"

"I threatened him." She takes another slice, licks the cream off before eating it.

"What could you possibly threaten him with?"

"I told him that if he didn't, I'd go crying to Siobhan and tell her that he's sexually abusing me."

x

Abby freezes, and at the lack of glee in her friend's eyes she's reduced to a horrified whisper. "That... is... _Evil_."

"Actually, I didn't." She grins and takes another cream and berry slice. "I'd never do such a thing. I appealed to his better nature."

"Ah."

"I told him that if he didn't I _would_ cry and wouldn't stop until he did."

Abby considers this. "You know, that'd be an interesting challenge, see who'd cave first."

Sammy waggles the papers, getting more strawberry marks on them.

"Well, now that you've got it, what do you think of it?"

She drops them back on her lap, thinks about the answer, finally confesses "I'm not sure."

"I _told_ him he should have gotten permission before using you."

"He seems to have taken Gibbsie's Rule 18 to heart."

"'It's better to seek forgiveness than to ask permission'."

"From what I've read so far, he's going to be seeking a _lot_ of forgiveness."

x

"What are you up to?"

"Chapter Five. Tibbs is interrogating me, rather he's interrogating _Sabrina Shore_ , but she tells him that when Karen - Mavis SanAntonio, rather - betrayed me - her - that I -" she slaps the papers, "God, these pronouns are going to be the _death_ of me. That Sabrina beat Mavis up. That didn't happen, not in real life. Okay, I _tried_ to fight Karen and she beat the crap out of _me._ This makes me look like I'm some kind of violent bitch. Or should I say violent Butch?"

"I guess he wanted Sabrina to seem guilty."

"Maybe. _I_ didn't do anything to make myself look guilty. I was too busy telling everyone I was innocent."

"Well, you were. Innocent as a new born baby."

"Thank you."

"Baby _rat_ , that is."

"No channeling Bugs Bunny." The strawberries finished, she runs her finger within the bowl and sucks off the splotch of cream.

"Well, perhaps it's good he changed some things."

"Wait until you read it."

To Abby she sounds neither happy nor consoled.


	17. Legendary

Chapter Seventeen  
Legendary

The Washington and New Orleans teams are assembled in their adjacent bullpens, for Pride and his agents it's borrowed space beyond the partition shared with Gibbs and David. When Gibbs comes down the stairs to the panoramic window from his morning report to the Director on what they don't have and enters with his ubiquitous large coffee it's the signal for the teams to merge to determine what, if any, progress can been made. It's a bright Monday, forecast to be another scorcher - today might actually hit 100 - and there's too little progress.

"We've gone over the list of potential people who could have known about the secret room," Tony reports.

"It's a short list," LaSalle confirms. "When you get past the parents and grandmother – grandfather Harold passed when Robert was 19 – all that's left are the Staff and the Contractors who did the work on the restoration. We still have to interview the staff, that'll be this morning, but the butler has been there the longest and he's nine years. If what Saunders said was true, that the work the Contractors did on the hall was cosmetic, they may not have known. They certainly didn't report finding anything."

x

"The plans for the house show the middle room," he continues, "as we found before, in the 1780's but there's nothing on the 1940's plan so sometime in that Century and a half someone changed things." He sees Gibbs' ongoing opinion of that issue but the senior Agent doesn't interrupt. "I know what you said, that anyone who went into the rooms on either side and paid even a bit of attention should've figured out what something was up, but the only thing I can think is that it was a real secret that for one reason or another the Saunders elders took to their graves."

"Under the body," Ziva reminds them, "the floor was immaculate. Someone was using it."

"I don't think Annette Saunders used it as a love hutch," Meredith says. "Not with her bedroom upstairs and Devlin's prints all over it."

"Someone put that woman in there and then never opened it again. Palmer, did you get in touch with Devlin's Lawyer?"

"Yes, sir. He's due within the hour."

"Where's Saunders?"

McGee says "Still at the hotel. It's not 0800 yet," he says half cautiously. Sometimes it's not a good idea to remind Gibbs about Overtime, on either end of the shift. "Dorneget is supposed to bring him in when he comes on duty."

"No. Tail him and keep us updated." He only has the Devlins for a few more hours and wants to make progress on them before he has to release them after their 24th hour.

"Pinning the tail," McGee confirms, picking up his phone. Crack of dawn days are fine for the agents, but as long as they know where their witness is he can stay there.

"What do we have on the wife?"

x

Tony steps out from behind his desk, takes up the remote control for the plasma and brings up the feed from his computer, a copy of the woman's DC Driver's License. Gibbs and Pride step up next to him and the others fit in on the second tier, McGee the last to join the group. "Debbie Devlin, twenty five, treated in the past six months for everything from fractured wrist to vaginal tearing. She's had several bruised ribs, contusions–."

"Gibbs, she is a walking punching bag," Ziva declares from behind his right side, "who will not say a bad word against her husband. Ducky came in extra early to have a talk with her, but," she checks her watch, "it might even be going on."

"What about the fingerprints from that wall?"

"Abby emailed her report before she left yesterday," Ziva says. "The inner side of the door is too rough to get any prints, but on the outer side she isolated her own, Sky's and ten other distinct sets. She's going to isolate the family's and Sammy's boyfriend but she doesn't have any of those prints yet. She says she called Marsters to come in to be fingerprinted–"

"Bet that went over well," Chris LaSalle quips.

"She is focusing not on the outer wall as much as the edge of the door, but must go through the existing staff from those years. She says give her three hours and not in 'Scott time', whatever she means by that."

"It means it won't be an hour and a half."

x

 _"Hi_!" a too cheerful voice calls from behind them.

Gibbs looks back with several of the others to see Samantha Sky step into the bullpen. "What are you doing here?" The joie de vivre of the blue scrubbed, pink ballet slippered, perennially too happy blonde imp isn't someone he wants to deal with before his second coffee.

 _"Good_ morning, all," she says with her usual elation, acting as though she hadn't heard Gibbs' testy tone. The broken chorus of 'good mornings' is by no means as enthusiastic. She focuses the bright lights of her pale blue eyes on Gibbs. "Ducky says he's done consulting with your client - his words, not mine - but he wants a little while to put his thoughts into words. He'll send you a report as soon as he can."

Gibbs' stare is his 'you could have done that with a phone call, now go away' version. "Thank you." He won't be uncivil to the sprite just because he feels uncivil.

"So, this is Team Gibbs and Team Pride?"

"Team NCIS," Gibbs corrects.

"With a lot of pride." Meredith's quip earns her a thumbs up from DiNozzo.

"You still here on business, or are you just hanging around in case Abby shows up?"

The agents disperse back to their respective desks, more to get out of the firing zone.

"You know," she says, scanning their faces left to right, her expression as bright as ever. "I'm sensing a lot of tension up here this morning."

"That's because there _is_ a lot of tension," McGee tells her, sitting down behind his desk. Much as he likes the spritely imp, she's a bit much to deal with before 0800, or day three of a case that's going nowhere at the speed of molasses.

"I know!" she declares with unabated enthusiasm. "How about if I go upstairs to the Café and bring you all down a couple cups of _shit_..."

x

Sammy is not given to gratuitous obscenity, particularly not in such a fall-off-the-cliff tone. It pulls every eye to her, but hers are locked on the plasma screen between Tony and Tim's desks.

Tony is the first able to put his astonishment into words. " _What?_ "

"Debbie Devlin. What's she doing up there?"

Gibbs is partially behind his desk and his glare fixes her as a butterfly to a screen. "You know her." He makes it clear it's not a question and he expects an explanation.

"Sure I know her," she says, her voice bright again. "She's _Legendary._ " She looks again at all the eyes locked on her and the light vanishes from hers. "Er, no," she says, voice dropping to the second floor. "No, I'm sorry. On second thought I – I don't know her. My mistake. Excuse me." She turns to hurry away but doesn't reach the bullpen exit before Gibbs, around his desk in near record time, catches up, his hand tight about her arm as he propels her out. "You're _hurting_ me!"

The pressure eases but he quick marches her down the corridor to the elevator, presses the button as Pride arrives behind them. The chime rings and the doors open a moment later; he pulls her aboard and pushes her deep into the car. The doors close behind Pride and Gibbs slaps the Emergency Stop switch.

The car shakes as the locks engage and the lights dim to blue emergency.

The two men turn on her. She backs against the wall and now the light shining from her eyes is all fear.

"I don't have claustrophobia but you could give me Gibbstrophobia."

"How do you know her?"

"Oh, Lord," she appeals quietly, looking left and right, mostly low so she doesn't have to see their faces.

x

"Miss Sky," Pride says, deciding since having looked in his old partner's eyes that he has more patience with the Apprentice M.E., "Mrs. Devlin is not only a victim of Domestic Abuse but is likely to be very helpful in our case. We think Jerry Devlin is doing the same thing to his wife as he might have done to Annette Saunders." He's not sure what to make of her expression but "Since you so obviously know her, and were so concerned about what was done to Saunders, we have to know what you know. What did you mean by 'she's legendary'?"

The look she turns to him is all candor and sincerity. "Agent Pride, you have to understand that I can't just blurt out what I know – despite the fact that I blurted out what I know. It's a matter of Confidentiality, but I can tell you that she is not being abused. Not by her husband at least. Not abused."

Gibbs is almost on her feet. Pressed back to the wall, she looks up the foot distance between their eyes. "Tell me."

Pride watches her fear spike. He touches Gibbs' arm and the man backs away but tells her "I brought you here to allow you privacy, because I thought I recognized why you didn't say anything out there." He knows she's not ashamed of her private life, she's told others about herself but he's kept the confidentiality she'd asked for when they'd first discussed this so many months ago. "But we can go down to Interrogation and record everything you say if that's what you want."

"No," she whispers, recovering. She looks up to Pride, but "I have to start at the beginning. It's not a crime, but it's very, very private. I have to keep discretion and I have to ask you to respect this."

Pride looks to Gibbs, gets a nod. "Anything that doesn't pertain to that mummy downstairs I'll keep to myself until the law requires otherwise."

x

She still fidgets, and when she looks up and meets his eyes it's obvious she's forcing herself to. "I'm part of, well, call it a sub-culture. A fancy name, I admit, since we're _all_ part of one sub-culture or another and–."

"Sky." Gibbs' tone declares she's run out of leeway.

"An _Adult_ sub-culture - of those who enjoy doing things differently. There are several places where we, well, where we congregate, but the most famous ones, the ones the public has heard of, are 'Taiwan On' and 'Sodom and Gomorrah'."

Pride holds up his hand. "I think I understand."

"There are several..." She looks down and away, whispering "Oh, how can I put this?" She looks back up to him, voice forced back to normal. "Flavors. People have different likes, and even in them there are different levels of intensity. I like to be tied up. I like to be spanked - in the _right_ way. And to submit – to be submissive." Her expression hardens. "There is _nothing_ wrong with it, we are _not_ weird and we are _not_ perv–!" she stops again at his raised hand.

"I wasn't making any judgment."

"Just making sure. Not everyone admits that it's my business and not theirs."

"Your business."

"Devlin," Gibbs says.

x

Her expression begins to return, not to her normal pixie-like joie de vivre but rather a working shadow of it that she constructs as she speaks. "Anyway, if I'm on the mild side, she is EX – _TREEM._ Her satisfaction is bought at extreme violence, intense pain, brutality of a sort... One day, a month or so ago, she'd been with two guys. There's a well padded room in the basement of Sodom and Gomorrah where you can't hurt yourself, and Gold members can even rent a lock for the realism, but only with Gold members. There's a gimmick button on the lock so all you have to do is press the back and it opens. I've seen the room but never needed it, but the padding's everywhere and three layers thick.

"Anyway, they brought her up from the basement but she had to be helped up the stairs with one of them on each arm, and I could see on her face that though she was covered in developing bruises she'd had a really _good_ time.

"They put her down in an easy chair, very carefully. Now I'm a Doctor, so when I saw her like that I _had_ to go over and check her out. According to her she was okay, that she had asked for everything that had been done to her and had enjoyed every second. Left up to me I would have called an ambulance and brought her to an ER, but she'd have nothing to do with that. She said it was only a mild Scene."

She takes a deep breath, visibly tries to get over the point. "If that was the result of a mild Scene I never want to know her version of an intense one, but I've seen her around often enough to know that she enjoys them, that she wants them. She says she can't have a good time without them."

"What about her husband?"

"One of my first questions. She does do vanilla; _no one_ could do the things she does to get off every time, she'd never survive it. She says he helps, but she usually goes there alone. He doesn't get as intense as she needs. He'll hit her because he knows she likes it, needs it, but he loves her too much to really give her the intensity she wants. She can't _enjoy_ sex enough without being forced and hurt, and only really gets off well from the really brutal stuff, the stuff that should put her in a hospital.

"Now I like a bit of force – a _bit_ of force – to be tied and made helpless so I can't resist, but to hear her, getting the hell beaten out of her is just the first part of foreplay."

Pride looks to Gibbs. "He doesn't abuse her."

That's what both Devlins had repeatedly said.

x

Gibbs turns and reaches for the Emergency Stop switch, but Sammy gets around him quickly and grasps his wrist in both hands, then looks to the other man. "Special Agent Pride, Special Agent Gibbs knows who I am and what I like. I'm not going to deny what I am to anyone, and I'm not going to apologize to anyone for who or what I like or do. I don't wear masks. I'm a Bi Sub and I don't give a damn who knows, so long as they leave me to myself and my free choices. But Sodom and Gomorrah, and virtually everywhere else, has a Policy of Discretion. If they know I yapped about someone without that person's permission, possibly Outed someone who didn't want to be Outed, I wouldn't be able to show my face again."

"I haven't heard a word you said."

But as the doors open, both Investigators know that they no longer have any handle on their case.

x

The Supervisors return to their teams after Sammy has retreated to the forward stairs. "Devlin hasn't been abusing his wife," Gibbs declares and lets the outraged looks slide off him. "David, Palmer, cut them loose. Let's bring in Saunders. This time we're pulling his life story out through his ears."

"Boss, I was going to call you while you were in Conference. Ned Dorneget called, Paul Saunders left the hotel and he followed him."

"Where is he?" Galvanized, he looks to Pride.

"Glenwood Cemetery. Records show his grandparents and parents are buried there."

The two men are gone.


	18. Memories

Chapter Eighteen  
Memories

By the time Gibbs' yellow and black Hemi had cleared the front gate McGee had called to report that Paul Saunders had arrived at Glenwood Cemetery in the Northeast quarter. Dorneget waits in his car on the street in sight of the Lincoln Road NE entrance his charge had used, allowing Saunders privacy to conduct his affairs. Gibbs, who has a talent for warping space to the extent that his team theorizes that he can actually arrive at his destination before leaving the Navy Yard, makes the cross district trek in near record time.

A call ahead to the surveilling agent brings them together across the street from the cemetery entrance. When he'd followed Saunders and saw him leave the office, Dorneget had gone in and obtained a map of the complex and marked the location of the Saunders' burial site. He'd returned to the street and had it ready when Gibbs and Pride arrived.

Leaving Dorneget to cover the entrance, the Senior Agents navigate the sprawling expanse of curved and interlinked roads through gravestones and monuments into the northeast section between I and K. They see several people scattered through the tremendous range this Monday morning as they travel the road which meanders between the manicured expanses of green until they pull behind a Mercedes SLK.

Paul Saunders doesn't look at them as he leans against the side of the car. When Gibbs and Pride get out they don't approach him. Instead they pass onto the grass, walk the three rows to a trio of plots, one marked with a large stone for Harold and Nora straddling the pair of graves to the left while Robert and Elizabeth's large stone extends between the third and fourth, half over each of them. There are two spaces to the right of these, the grass level and unmarked.

They stand in respectful silence with their own thoughts for half a minute, and only then do they turn to find Paul is standing behind them by the second row.

"Thank you." He returns to the car and the agents follow until they gather at its side. "I called this morning to make the arrangements. We've had the plots for years, when my Grandfather died we got all six so we would be together." He looks to the far left plot. "I never knew him, dad's father. Today I just... came out. One thing about cemeteries, people leave you alone." He looks from one to the other. "Who told you where to find me?"

"You never were alone," Pride tells him. At his blank look, he explains "Our agent just gave you your space."

"I needed to be alone, to process all this. It's like things just turned upside down for me. But I guess you have questions."

x

"Our ME says he found injuries on your sister," Gibbs says, "that she had a broken arm, broken rib. They kept her out of work for a couple of weeks."

"Oh yeah." He continues staring at the graves. He's focused on the unoccupied ground, fifth from the left. "She had an accident. She was watching a football game, one of those High School things, but from right on the edge when she got slammed a couple of months before it happened. Before... It happened. She was... Dad... they settled it out of court."

After long enough, Pride points out that "She also said in her diary that three days before she disappeared she dislocated her shoulder. She also says she didn't tell anyone, but went to work at the Clinic."

He nods. "She slipped on the marble steps in the foyer, not long after they were done. They should never have been polished, I don't know what Sam Elliot was thinking way back then. Those things were a menace, they looked prettier than they deserved to be. She fell halfway down those stairs. There are runners on them now, but back then... She slipped, on what I never knew. She wasn't really hurt, not badly. I mean falls on marble steps that high could kill you but she... She didn't fall all the way down, grabbed the banister but did it way wrong. She knew how to tell dad to help; they got her shoulder fixed, popped the arm back in, then took her to the hospital. They said it was more pain than real damage, tendons and ligaments not quite torn."

x

He stares ahead at the distant graves.

"Good thing she had a closet full of Emergency meds," Gibbs says quietly.

"Yes," he whispers, staring at the graves.

"And the defibrillator. For your grandmother."

"Yes," he says as quietly. His eyes shift slightly to the second grave.

"But when Nora Saunders needed it, Annette wasn't there to help. She was already dead."

"Yes."

"And she was the only one who knew how to work it properly."

Paul's face is a mask of grief. He leaves the car, walks slowly to the graves. Slowly he kneels down but not before the second grave or the other paired ones, but at the foot of the fifth plot, the first without a stone, Annette's to-be grave, the still grass soon to be uprooted when the plot receives its charge. Gibbs and Pride stand on each side before the empty plot. Paul doesn't look up at either of them, stares at the undisturbed grass and his voice is low, infinitely sad. "Yes."

"You tried to use it that day," Gibbs says, finally sure of the truth. "But you didn't know how."

"Yes." Hands clasped before him, shoulders shaking, he begins to cry. Neither Gibbs nor Pride do anything as Paul sobs.

x

For a long time the men wait until finally the tumult passes. It takes a great effort but Paul Saunders finally forces himself to look up. His face is drawn as though he's aged ten years and in his eyes is a lifetime of pain.

"What happened?" Pride asks.

He can't keep their eyes, can see only the graves. "I've spent these past two days... three days... remembering... trying to remember. For a long time it was like dreams, bits and pieces of reality forcing their way in, forcing the fantasy out." His voice is distant. Quiet. Dead. Tears trickle down his cheeks. He doesn't try to stop them.

"Mom and dad took Nana out for a celebration, I don't know why any more. Ann was supposed to mind me. I was the kid, needed his big sister as a sitter. I remember I didn't think I did," he sighs, "but I did."

His eyes never leave the grass. "We were in the kitchen. She was cooking dinner. She'd just come back from work. She wasn't even supposed to be in but she went anyway. No matter how much she hurt, she worked. She came home late, had to hurry dinner, only got her shoes and jacket off. I was sitting at the table with my school books. She was cooking, helping me with my homework, preparing the food, setting the table, half a dozen things." He wipes tears away.

"She was helping me with some _stupid_ math problem I couldn't get when a pot of water boiled over. We had an electric stove back then. She ran to get it, slipped in her socks on the hot water covering the floor, hurried to turn off the stove, tried to pull the plug over it..." He wipes his eyes hard. "What idiot puts a power strip over a stove?" he demands with fire, but there's no answer that can mean anything.

x

"I only remember her screaming. I stood there, frozen stiff as she screamed and screamed and I couldn't _move_. I remember now being scared, so scared." He scrubs the tears from his face.

"She was screaming and I couldn't do anything but watch! She fell down and wasn't moving. I tried to help." He finally looks up to the men. " _I tried to help_!" He takes a deep breath, finally lets it out. "But I was a _kid._ I didn't _know_ how to help. But I watched all the shows, Emergency, Marcus Welby, Doctor Kildare, Saint Elsewhere, E.R., all the old things. Ann used to record them, I think even when she was a kid she wanted to be a doctor, and we used to watch some together.

"That's why I thought I knew what to do. When someone's heart stops you use a defibrillator and Ann had a defibrillator in her room.

"I ran to get it. I knew from television how to turn it on, how to charge it. It was a simple one. I could figure it out. I used it," he presses his fists against his eyes to rub away the tears. "It shocked her but nothing happened. She didn't wake up. They _always_ woke up on TV, when the heart restarted. So I did it again. It didn't work either so I tried it again. And again. And again."

He looks up to them, wet eyes haunted with decades of pain. "I remember screaming at her. Wake up. Wake up. Come on, Ann, you have to wake up. I kept trying and trying and trying... and trying... and trying..." He shakes his head. "I remember now crying so much I could barely see the controls, but I kept _trying._ I have no idea how many times I tried."

Gibbs thinks 'Twenty' but won't torture the man by saying it. There had been forty marks beside the burns on her right fingers, hand and her feet.

"I stopped, I don't know why." His gaze drops, he can't look at them any longer. "I think I realized she was dead and shocking her wasn't bringing her back like it was supposed to and wouldn't bring her back."

x

"Paul," Pride says, "it was an accident. But why did you hide her?"

Still kneeling, he looks up at them, tears streaming down his face. "I was a _kid._ I didn't know better. All I did know was that when the Police find a dead body someone gets blamed. I was the only one there so I was going to prison for the rest of my life.

"I was scared.

"But I had my secret hiding place. I'd found it years before, when I was really a kid, five or six I think. I'd had a temper tantrum, kicked the wall and it had opened. No one else knew. I found it by accident, kept it up. It became my secret headquarters, my private place for when I really wanted to be alone. Well, I knew I had to hide Ann or I was going to jail. I hid her, cleaned up everything." He looks to the four graves to his left. "And I lied to my family when they came home, told them that she never came home.

"I was scared, so I lied. The police came and I lied. You came and I lied. I lied because I was scared, but as I kept lying it started becoming easy. Dad had no idea how many times he helped me by constantly sending me to my room when people came to search or help or ask questions.

"I lied and I lied and I lied, down through the years. Nana died and I knew it was _my_ fault that she was dead, because I killed Ann and so Ann wasn't be there to save Nana."

x

He takes a deep breath, holds it, lets it out slowly and stops looking into the past, stares instead at the graves. "I don't know when the lies became truth. I don't know when I started _believing_ that I hadn't seen her, that I didn't know anything. I think my mind... they say your mind pushes out truth too terrible to face. I don't know. All I know is I _forgot_ the secret room. I _forgot_ what happened to Ann. I _forgot_ what I did. The lies became the truth. I don't know when it happened, how it happened, it happened so gradually, but my killing my sister, leaving my grandmother with no rescue, was so horrible I finally couldn't remember it any longer. The lies became the truth." He takes a deep breath, looks up to the towering agents.

"Agent Gibbs, when you came on Friday and told me you found Ann I swear to you I really was shocked. When you showed me the room I swear to God I had no idea it had been there. I think it didn't exist for me anymore. When you showed me her body I was shocked because I'd had no idea _she_ was there. I didn't tell one lie to you on Friday or Saturday because my lies had become my truth. I really _believed_ she had just disappeared, and as I grew up over the past twenty one years the lies became my false memories.

"They became my reality. My truth."

x

He looks down to the grass. "But over the past two days, talking to you, thinking, remembering, the real reality started breaking in, a bit at a time, a flash here and there, gradually whole memories. I remembered what I did, what I didn't do."

He looks to the graves to his left. "I came here yesterday, not just to arrange for Ann, but to apologize. To deal with my guilt. I don't _know_ if I murdered my sister. I don't _know_ if my stupidity caused my Nana to die. I would confess if I knew what to confess to. I didn't want them to die. I _tried_ to save Ann. I tried to save her and as God is my witness," tears come hard, "I didn't know _how_!"


	19. Not My Plan

Chapter Nineteen  
Not My Plan

Monday is long and painful for the Agents of Washington and New Orleans but most especially for Leroy Jethro Gibbs and Dwayne Cassius Pride, whose sessions with NCIS' Director and the MTAC Conference with the Assistant Director of the Department of Justice ultimately end after 1500. As the final step, to purge the marathon sessions, Gibbs seeks the advice of his second oldest friend in NCIS. Palmer has been sent on an errand, so for a short while they're alone.

"The easiest part of the day is that NCIS will pay for the damage to the Devlins' home so we can relieve those agents guarding the place, and we'll alert Metro to the real situation, and the Devlins will be more discreet." He dismisses the inconsequential because the real tragedy is so taxing.

"What did you learn from Mr. Saunders?"

"He told us a lot of detail that had come back over the past day, about how he found the room and it became his private retreat, how he kept it clean so dust wouldn't give him away, how he used his father's camping lamp for light and would return it to the closet when he was done, how he kept a string to pull the switch and brought it out on that last day because he never wanted to go back." He had had to reach for the switch and Sammy Sky, who had found the room, would never have been able to reach it any more than child Paul could have. "That's one reason I never considered Paul a suspect, because once I found the lock I knew that a nine year old could never have used it."

"A misapplication of Rule 8?"

"Damned right."

x

"Have you decided what to do?" Ducky asks, unable to find anything good about the entire weekend.

He shakes his head, not wanting to think of it any longer. This has been his longest case, twenty one years, and the solution is as unsatisfactory as the problem. "It should take ten minutes when they finally get to the Bench, but Justice, the DA, Defense, the Director and Legal debated until they were red, white and blue in the face. NCIS will drop the Fraud that kept NIS running in circles for weeks and kept this a Cold Case for so long. He'll plead guilty to Involuntary Manslaughter, an accident. The DA will move for five years. Defense will press the fact he was a child, nine years old and doing what he thought he knew to do to save her, and will push for a Suspended Sentence. Justice will accept that motion. He never intended to kill her, but for the rest of his life he'll punish himself more than the government can."

"Memory is a malleable thing and then a bitter penalizer," the physician agrees philosophically. "Given desire and extreme emotional turmoil, which young Master Saunders had in abundance, one can convince one's self of anything. He remembered his version of reality for so long that, for him, it became reality, and I believe he was truly shocked to be confronted with the truth after all these years."

x

"He did what he thought he'd been taught, one of the reasons I don't watch television. But did he kill her?"

Ducky wishes he were a drinking man, and that he had one at this desk. "The answer to that leads us to the tragedy we face today. As life saving devices when used properly, defibrillators are often depicted in movies, television, video games and other fictional media, ninety nine percent of the time incorrectly. Their function is universally exaggerated, with the defibrillator apparently inducing a sudden, violent jerk or convulsion by the patient. In reality, although the muscles in the torso contract, they do not do so so spectacularly. Any such dramatic patient reaction is exceedingly rare.

"Similarly, fictional medical providers are often depicted defibrillating patients with a flat-line ECG rhythm, also known as asystole. This is _never_ done in real life, as the heart is not restarted by the defibrillator. Only cardiac arrest rhythms such as ventricular fibrillation and pulseless ventricular tachycardia can be defibrillated. This is because the purpose of the device is to shock the patient _into_ asystole and then let the heart resume a normal rhythm after a few seconds.

"Someone who is already in asystole _cannot_ be helped by electrical means, but needs urgent CPR and intravenous medication.

"There are several heart rhythms that can be 'shocked' when the patient is not in cardiac arrest, such as if he is in atrial fibrillation, atrial flutter or supraventricular tachycardia, which produce a erratic and ineffectual contractions, for which a specialized device is used; but this more complicated procedure is known as cardioversion, _not_ defibrillation."

"Really."

"Yes. In 1959 Bernard Lown commenced research in his animal laboratory in collaboration with engineer Barouh Berkovits into a technique which involved the charging of a bank of capacitors to approximately 1000 volts, then delivering the charge through an inductance to produce a heavily damped sinusoidal wave of finite duration such as 5 milliseconds to the heart by way of electrodes. This team developed an understanding of the optimal timing of shock delivery in the cardiac cycle, enabling the application of that device to deal with arrhythmias such as atrial fibrillation, atrial flutter and supraventricular tachycardias, which was a technique known as 'cardioversion'..." He's brought to a halt by Gibbs' stare.

"I understood 'in 1959'."

"Yes, well, suffice it to say that if not for the horrendous misrepresentations of AEDs over the past several decades, Paul Saunders' mistake might well never have happened. Household current, particularly because it is Alternating Current rather than Direct Current, is rarely fatal. From the description you gave me, it is very probable that Annette Saunders was only stunned, and when she collapsed she became a dead weight and broke the circuit. She would have been, however, only stunned, a condition that could last for several minutes."

"So my question: did he kill her?"

"I should very much like to disqualify myself as an Expert Witness in this case and leave it up to the interpretation of others, though I cannot." He meets Gibbs' eyes directly and the pedantic manner drops. "Young Paul, in his panic, very likely misinterpreted her condition. That is where the tragedy lies. Except for his actions, she would in due time have recovered consciousness."

xxx

Tim McGee is focused on his work, the records on his monitor requiring great attention if he's going to complete his Case File, when he becomes increasingly aware that something needs his attention. Thom E Gemcity takes this opportunity to whisper in his ear 'I feel a great disturbance in the Force', but when he looks up he jumps back not at the sight of Princess Leia but of his wife. " _Shav_?"

"Lord, I knew you were focused but I didn't expect to scare you."

"She has been standing there for a full minute," Ziva declares.

"I'm sorry. I'm actually _un_ focused. I'm split between my Report and 'The Other Locked Room'."

"Well, if you don't decide right," Gibbs says as he and Pride enter and their boss makes a bee line for his desk, "you had better pray that book sells."

"It will." He returns his attention to the Priest, for that is her persona, but he's amazed he hadn't seen her, especially when he belatedly realizes that everyone else has, for he doesn't believe anyone else could fail to lock their attention. His wife's normal Clerical summer attire is black skirt, light blue sleeveless back button blouse and inch and a half high wrap around collar.

This time she's wearing the so-rarely-indulged-in dress he'd bought her before the Pacific Princess cruise. It's a classic 'little black dress' that he notices now hugs her just a bit too affectionately for this bullpen, at least with Tony here. The distinction of this fingertip length dress is the white tab at the collar, inserted into slots or removed if she wants to be inconspicuous. But with that affectionate dress and her long legs above black high heeled slippers, she couldn't be inconspicuous.

"But what are you doing here?" It's Monday, and too far after 1600, not her usual Tuesday.

"Not my plan, a _chéadsearc_ , but Jennifer–" she glances over her shoulder to the unusually crowded bullpen, "that's Director Shepherd to you," she says with a sly smile before returning her attention to her husband, "called me in to consult on a special case. Not yours."

"One you can't tell me about."

"What other kind is there?"

"Everyone get out of here," Gibbs commands, "before Mollvaney calls with your next case."

x

"Well," Pride says, "that's our cue to leave too. Wheels up in less than two hours."

"Why not have Gibbs drive you?" DiNozzo suggests as the three Agents make their 'goodbyes'. "You can be at your HQ in two hours."

"Jet lag would be a killer," Chris LaSalle says.

"Do you get jet lag going south?"

"This is NCIS," Meredith Brody reminds them. "We do the impossible every day and twice on Fridays."

"Is yours NCIS' Annex or the Library's?" Tony asks.

"Let's get out of here," Pride urges firmly. He's seen 'The Librarians' and doesn't want to deal with anything they'd encounter.

" _Not_ before you give me a proper Jefferson Parish goodbye," Abby declares as she and Sammy Sky step into the bullpen. Sammy has changed back into her normal clothes, light blue skirt and vest over white blouse, but that word can never be stretched to cover anything Abby might wear, in this case a long blue poodle skirt and white blouse with red shortie tie, which combination announces to those who know her that she's going bowling with her Nun friends.

"I was on my way down to see you," he says, hugging her.

"In that case I'll go downstairs and wait for you where there are no prying eyes." But it's a moment longer before she lets go.

x

In the meantime, Sammy has stepped over to McGee's desk, a thick sheaf of papers in her hand.

"I'm glad I caught you before you left," she tells him, her voice penetrating enough to attract attention and halt departures. "I finished reading your draft of 'The Other Locked Room'."

He doesn't appreciate seeing the first and last papers marked with red remains that look like smears of strawberries and others that could be cream, but he's less interested in that than in knowing "What did you think?"

"Well," her tone is unusually firm, "I didn't realize you'd put so much of me in there."

He's surprised by her manner, nothing like her normal élan. Her tone has locked both team's attentions, and since his book is long ahead of publication he doesn't want any. "It wasn't you."

"No," she grants with evident reluctance. "Not Samantha Sky but Sabrina Shore. No one would make the connection." But then she drops the pretense. "But I didn't realize you thought of me quite like that."

"I changed a lot." Yes, too many people are interested in this conversation.

"True," she admits. "Long blonde hair instead of short, five eight instead of five two - thank you very much but I like my height. Lesbian instead of Bi. Flutist instead of violinist." She puts the papers on his desk. "You still kept me in Autopsy, thank you, but Richard Dodgers, what's with that?"

DiNozzo is faster. "Dick Dodgers in the 21st and a 6th Century."

"I thought that was it." For Daffy it had been 'Duck Dodgers in the 24th and a half'. She leans onto the desk."But if you think the opposite of a B&D Bisexual Sub is an S&M Lesbian Domme we _really_ have to talk."

She straightens at his look to the team, but "And the _Sex Scenes_ , especially the one where I - Sabrina rather - seduce an unsuspecting Amy Sutton, tie her up on the floor of her Lab and do such _terrible_ S &M things to her, things I'd _never_ do or ever _want_ to do - that was over the top."

He winces and wishes for less attention, that the men and women gathered near Ziva's desk wouldn't hear because a lot of the material is being revealed before publication. There's also a woman peering over the partition beyond Ziva's desk. "That's just 'Literary License'."

"Oh, so that's what it's called. You know, there were _some_ things in other sections I might try, but you had me in Scenes I've _never_ done in real life and have absolutely no intention of doing."

"Like what?" Tony asks.

She only glances at him. "Never you mind. But for the record, Tim, I do not start _anything_ with Abby. She's Straight and I don't cross lines."

No one other than Ruby Rae will ever find out what had happened the other evening.

x

"All right. But what did you think of the story itself?" is all Tim wants to know.

"Good story, but I've lived it. I think you captured how it was driving me crazy, though; finding Karen dead and then being busted and scared out of my mind to be tried for her murder plus a stranger's."

"So you did like it?"

She visibly considers the point before deciding that "I have only one question."

He's not sure he should say it but "Shoot."

She smiles quite sweetly, her voice filled with invitation. "Do you want to see me topless?"

x

It's incredible how seven simple words, spoken in such enticing tones, can bring so large a room to a halt. Now too many people peer over the partition beyond Gibbs' desk and two agents have paused in passing the bullpen entrance.

 _"What?"_ He looks to Siobhan who appears to be very interested in his answer. He returns to Sammy and can see she was very serious about the offer. "Why would you ask me that? And in front of my _wife_?"

She places both hands upon his desk, upon the strawberry and cream marked manuscript, and leans in intimately with a most inviting smile, her tone sweeter. "Well, I figure it's only fair that you should see me topless. After all, I'm going to see _you_ bottomless."

Tim looks about, gets no help from anyone. "Why?"

"Because, Tim E. Gemcity, if you publish that book," she leans closer for added emphasis and the smile vanishes, leaving her eyes stony, "I'll sue your pants off."

 _Fin_

Next Episode: The Phobos Affair: All my Affairs are homages to David McCallum, and in a very chilling Pauley Perrette video we learn from her that 'the only fear is fear itself'. Thank you, Pauley.


End file.
